DEFENSELESS: Trump’s Cuts to Weather Forecasting and Flood Protection Left Alaska Dangerously Unprepared for Devastating Storm

WASHINGTON, DC – As Sabotaging Our Safety continues to raise alarms about the Trump administration systematically weakening disaster infrastructure, thousands of Alaskans battling the aftermath of flooding this week are confronting a harrowing reality: when they needed accurate, timely, and properly-funded storm data most, it wasn’t there. While communities grapple with catastrophic flood and wind damage, the disaster preparedness systems they’ve depended on have been dramatically gutted through Trump’s cuts and the elimination of essential flood mitigation funding.

The timing is devastating for Alaskan families. Earlier this year, FEMA lost 20 percent of its staff, while $4.6 billion in flood mitigation funding was frozen. Trump’s DOGE cuts eliminated 10 percent of NOAA’s workforce, the very agency responsible for forecasting storms like the one that just devastated Alaska.

See below for coverage on how these cuts directly impacted Alaska:

CNN: Lack of weather data due to Trump’s budget cuts impacted forecast for deadly Alaska storm

The forecast for the powerful and deadly storm that battered small communities in western Alaska over the weekend was likely made worse by a lack of weather data triggered by the Trump administration’s cuts.

There is a gaping hole in weather balloon coverage in western Alaska — a critical shortage bedeviling US forecasts and the National Weather Service since layoffs hit the agency as part of the Department of Government Efficiency’s push to shrink the federal government back in February.

[Rick Thoman, a meteorologist with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks] described this storm as “the nightmare scenario” for forecasters, with a depleted NWS leading to fewer weather balloon launches in the runup to a major storm.

New York Times: Before Alaska Flooding, E.P.A. Canceled $20 Million Flood Protection Grant

Five months before catastrophic floods swept through the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk on Sunday, tearing many houses off their foundations, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant intended to protect the community from such extreme flooding.

The grant from the Environmental Protection Agency was designed to help stabilize the riverbank on which Kipnuk is built, protecting it from the twin threats of erosion and flooding.

But in May, the E.P.A. revoked the grant, which was issued at the end of the Biden administration, saying it was “no longer consistent” with the agency’s priorities. Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, boasted on social media that he was eliminating “wasteful DEI and Environmental Justice grants,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and programs to help communities facing a disproportionate level of environmental threats.