SAN ANTONIO – The Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General will investigate staffing shortages at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) following the deadly Hill Country floods.
Rep. Greg Casar announced Friday that he secured an independent investigation into overall staffing at the agencies, with particular attention to Texas, where flooding has killed at least 135 people this month.
Casar and Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Robert Garcia requested the investigation via an oversight letter on July 11. They raised concerns about “severe shortages” in staffing, including vacancies at local Texas offices during the flooding.
“Texans deserve answers about how these severe cuts to the National Weather Service affected the federal response to the devastating Hill Country floods,” Casar told TheTXLoop on Friday. “We need to do this to respect the dead, and we need to make sure we protect people’s safety moving forward.“
In the letter, the lawmakers said key positions, such as a staff forecaster and a lead meteorologist, were vacant at the Austin/San Antonio NWS office at the time of the flooding.
Another nearby office did not have a warning coordination meteorologist and a science officer, “positions that work with local emergency managers and help warn and evacuate residents,” they said.
They said staffing shortages may have led to insufficient forecasts and alerts.
NWS sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of July 4 before issuing flash flood emergencies, a rare alert notifying of imminent danger.
“While NWS did issue several flood warning alerts, including one indicating ‘a large and deadly flood wave’ at 5:34 a.m., Friday that urged residents and campers in Kerr County to seek higher ground, there are concerns about the effectiveness of those warnings,” the letter states.
>> Timeline: When the warnings began for Kerr County before catastrophic flooding
In the letter, the lawmakers laid blame on staffing and resource cuts implemented by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“Arbitrary cuts to vital services like NWS hurt emergency preparedness and put lives in danger,” the letter states. “Starting from an already small baseline number of staff, NWS has lost more than 10% of its workforce since the beginning of the Trump Administration. Because of these cuts, the agency is preparing for what an internal document has described as “severe shortages” in staffing—particularly at local weather offices, which perform the essential work that keeps weather reports up-to-date and accurate for communities across the country.”
They’re asking for a review of coordination and communication between state authorities, emergency personnel, NWS, local media and other groups.
“It needs to be very clear what the failures were at every single level of government,” Casar told TheTXLoop. “We should recognize the things that went well. We should be grateful to the first responders and the everyday neighbors that saved so many lives. But we also know that there were things that did not go well.“
Casar and Crockett serve on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, while Garcia is the committee’s ranking member.
Read also:
Copyright 2025 by TheTXLoop – All rights reserved.