U.S. Rocked by Deadly Tornadoes After Trump Gutted Key Agency
A violent tornado outbreak over the weekend sent millions bracing in the Midwest and South and killed at least 40 people, just days after Donald Trump's administration ordered another round of massive layoffs at the country's severe weather tracking agency.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency announced last week that it would terminate 10 percent of its workforce, which will equate to roughly 1,000 of the agency's 10,000 employees.
NOAA plays an essential role in weather forecasting and warning Americans about natural disasters, including avalanches, electrical events, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, and of course, tornadoes. Reporting from 122 local offices, NOAA officials provide guidance on how to avoid danger.
The agency had already been subject to an earlier round of workforce cuts at the beginning of the month. By the time the latest cuts are complete, one in four jobs at the agency will have been terminated.
Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist who is a conservative and NOAA chief scientist under Trump, warned against the cuts, calling NOAA's work an 'amazing undertaking.'
'You can't count on TV meteorologists to fill this gap and you can't count on private meteorology,' Maue told the Associated Press. 'You can't count on your weather app to call you up and alert you'' to tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, and floods in your area.
NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said that the cuts proposed by the Trump administration posed a serious threat to the work of his agency.
'This is not government efficiency,' Spinrad told the AP. 'It is the first steps toward eradication. There is no way to make these kinds of cuts without removing or strongly compromising mission capabilities.'
The powerful storm system was exiting the U.S. on Monday, leaving behind a trail of destruction and fatalities concentrated mostly in Missouri.
Trump posted a statement on social media Sunday saying that his administration was tracking the severe weather event.
'We are actively monitoring the severe tornadoes and storms that have impacted many States across the South and Midwest—36 innocent lives have been lost, and many more devastated,' he wrote.
'The National Guard have been deployed to Arkansas, and my Administration is ready to assist State and Local Officials, as they help their communities to try and recover from the damage. Please join Melania and me in praying for everyone impacted by these terrible storms!'
But before that, he was bragging about having won a golf award at his own club.
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Erie County Deputy Coroner Lyell Cook and his wife were driving home to Girard from Erie on May 31, 1985. At Kmart on West 26th Street, they saw carts careening through the parking lot in the wind. When the couple reached Walnut Creek Hill in Fairview, the sun shone through a single opening in an otherwise ominous sky. "The clouds were just roiling, and there was this single spot of sun. My father called that a sun dog. He always said that when you saw that, there was a tornado under it," Cook said. Soon after, the couple stopped for dinner at a Girard tavern. "It was really hot for May, and they had the front door propped open. Then all of a sudden what sounded like every siren in Erie County went off and kept going and going and going," Cook said. "Firetrucks, ambulances, police cars — anything with a siren went whipping past. Then my voice pager went off and (Coroner) Merle (Wood) said, 'Grab some cots and as many sheets and things as you can and meet me in Albion." 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Pettis' husband, Bob Pettis, was in Cranesville with a Youth for Christ group picking rocks from a farmer's field. Their sons Joshua, 7; Matthew, 5; and Stephen, 4, were watching TV near a picture window in their First Avenue living room. "I gathered them up and we went straight down to the basement," Pettis said. Wind, dirt and debris smashed the only window in the basement as Pettis and her boys huddled and prayed. "I had them shut their eyes. There was all this dirt and debris coming down and flying out of the furnace area," Pettis said. When it was over, the family went upstairs. "Our house was the fourth house from the main street, and it was the first house from the main street that was standing," Pettis said. "Even across the street, all the houses were down." An elderly woman in the house directly across the street had been sitting in a chair near the front window. She survived. "But she ended up in the back yard in that chair," Pettis said. In the Pettis' living room where the boys had been watching television, a beam had come through the window and was impaled in the opposite wall. Sheets from an upstairs bedroom were caught between a living room wall and the ceiling. "The whole wall had ballooned out and slapped back, and the sheets were pinned in the crease where the wall met the ceiling," Pettis said. It was later determined that the house had been moved from its foundation and that the roof had been torn off and brought back down. The house had to be demolished, its structure most likely buried at Albion Borough Park. "At the west end of the park, near the arena where there are shows during the Albion Fair, is a big hilly hump that's grassed over now. All the debris from Albion was buried there," Pettis said. Northwestern School District business manager Paul Sachar had been delivering packets for a coming school board meeting to school directors that Friday afternoon and was heading home to Cranesville when his brother-in-law, a ham radio operator, called and advised him to go back to Albion. "He said there had been a tornado and it had caused some damage, but he didn't know how severe," Sachar, now retired, said. Just weeks before, Sachar had agreed to serve as the district's emergency management coordinator at the request of schools Superintendent Andrew Hills. "He said that we needed to designate an emergency management person and that there probably wouldn't be much that I needed to do," Sachar said. "Then in a month or a little over a month we were faced with a major crisis." Though just blocks away from some of the worst storm damage, schools on Northwestern's Albion campus were untouched. A temporary morgue was set up at Northwestern High School. 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