Debate Arises Over Budget Cuts' Effect on Federal Emergency Alert Systems

FEMA's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) distributes wireless emergency alerts to mobile devices, alerts to radios and TVs via the emergency alert system, and alerts on NOAA's weather radio.

The White House in March issued an executive order saying states and local governments would "play a more active and significant role in national resilience and preparedness, thereby saving American lives, securing American livelihoods, reducing taxpayer burdens through efficiency, and unleashing our collective prosperity." President Donald Trump has said he's contemplating doing away with FEMA in favor of states handling disaster and emergency response.

National Emergency Management Association President Lynn Budd said National Weather Service (NWS) budgets and staffing issues could affect the timing of alerts. For instance, more vague or broader alerts might have to be issued earlier, compared to what has been more specific ones. The focus might also have to switch to getting people to evacuate or take shelter earlier. Budd, who is director of Wyoming's Office of Homeland Security, said the Cheyenne office, one of the five NWS offices covering the state, is reducing its overnight coverage hours. That will likely diminish its predictive capabilities and ability to issue warnings, she said, although there might be flexibility in staffing the office if a notable weather event is coming. Budd added that there has also been a reduction in weather balloons that will create challenges for forecasting.

States and localities can adjust how much they rely on the federal government for warnings, "but it can't happen overnight," Budd said. She said there are also questions about the consequences of budget reductions in non-emergency situations, such as state Transportation Departments' relying on weather predictions to decide how many snowplows respond to a storm.

Bret Walts, chief marketing officer for BAM Weather, an Indiana-based weather forecast consultancy, said closing NWS offices raises the risk that some severe storms won't be accompanied by warnings. Some Kentucky areas affected by severe weather earlier this month didn't receive warnings until the storms were already hitting them, and those corresponded to localities where cuts reduced NWS staffing, Walts said. State and local emergency management personnel have, at times, relied on talking directly with NWS during hazardous weather, but those agencies won't be able to do that as much going forward, he said.

Walts said BAM is trying to supplement government-delivered alerts for clients, notifying them via its platform or social media. BAM alerted clients earlier this month about a tornado in the Bloomington, Indiana, area several minutes before an IPAWS warning. However, Walts said, the underlying, NWS-generated data that BAM and other private weather businesses rely on doesn't seem at risk since much of its radar and modeling is automated.

A lack of senior meteorology leadership at NWS offices, as well as fewer weather balloons, is making its mark on NWS office capabilities, said Juan Declet-Barreto, a senior social scientist-climate vulnerability at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He said there's an increased likelihood that NWS alerts won't reflect worsening weather conditions.

Defenders

Alert origination consultant and trainer Eddie Bertola told us he hasn't yet seen alerting impaired by budget issues, and he doesn't expect it. The Arkansas resident said that during recent tornadoes there, he and others received timely notifications. NWS alerting and monitoring are heavily automated, he noted.

A far bigger challenge than federal budget cuts, Bertola said, is the lack of expertise and training in issuing alerts among state and local alerting authorities. There are close to 2,000 alerting authorities registered with IPAWS, but it's not clear how many feel confident using the system or are trained in its use or in alert-origination software, he said.

Bertola also said IPAWS use has been more heavily focused on wireless emergency alerts, and the past year or so has seen a greater focus on the emergency alert system. The different capabilities of WEA and EAS -- and the fact they could reach different audiences -- make it important not to rely on one over the other, he said.

Several state emergency alerting officials told us that they haven’t noticed a change in weather alerting in the wake of cuts at NOAA and NWS. “My communication with the National Weather Service isn't any different than it has been in the past,” said Dennis Bookey, chair of the Alaska State Emergency Communications Committee (SECC). Chris Daniel, chair of the Arkansas SECC, said weather radio facilities in his area have experienced outages, but that has been an issue for several years and seems unrelated to recent cuts. Daniel said the outages happen in some cases because the facilities are remote, and the NWS hasn’t always had the personnel to work them. “It’s just the system that’s broken.”

Ed Czarnecki, vice president-government and international for EAS equipment manufacturer Digital Alert Systems, also said he hasn’t seen a change in weather alerting under the new administration. Rather than a degradation in service, the NWS has been performing planned upgrades of facilities, Czarnecki said. Those improvements have led to some rolling outages as systems are temporarily taken offline, but that isn’t a reflection of staffing cuts, he said. The EAS system would likely also be able to weather future staffing cuts at FEMA because the employees who work on IPAWS are part of the agency's Office of National Continuity Programs and thus protected from workforce reduction efforts. According to FEMA’s website, the office's task is to ensure the government can continue “performing essential functions and delivering critical services when typical operations are disrupted by an emergency,” including alerting.

Daniel said there are more pressing issues for emergency alerting than cuts at NWS and NOAA. He pointed to an NAB petition calling for the FCC to allow broadcasters to use software-based EAS systems instead of the physical devices currently required (see 2505230056). “We all know in the field that won’t work,” he said. “The internet is the weakest link in the chain.”

NAB’s proposal has received wide support from broadcasters, MVPDs and FEMA itself, while Digital Alert Systems and a group of state emergency officials have raised concerns. Daniel said FEMA and FCC staffers are out of touch with the realities of broadcasting and emergencies in practice. “The ones of us that are on the ground trying to make all this stuff happen are being told to do things by people who have no earthly idea how to do it.”

A FEMA spokesperson emailed that the agency’s principles for emergency management "assert that disasters are best managed when they’re federally supported, state managed and locally executed." FEMA added that with federal, state, tribal, local and territorial agencies, "we’re strengthening and enhancing partnerships [and] ensuring our role supports decisions that need to happen at the state and local levels." Under Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson, the agency "is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades." Under current agency management, it said, "FEMA is fully activated in preparation for Hurricane Season.”