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‘It’s Making Us Less Prepared’: Shutdown Slows Planning for Hurricanes and Other Disasters

Damage caused by Hurricane Michael in Lynn Haven, Fla., in October. Research and instruction have come to a halt for hurricane forecasters and an array of other emergency workers.Credit...Johnny Milano for The New York Times

For experts who make a living forecasting hurricanes, storm season is a year-round worry. When the tropics are calm, as they are now, researchers dive into data, analyze results, improve scientific models and train state and local officials on the latest technology that can help them make lifesaving decisions.

But the partial government shutdown — the longest in United States history — has brought much of that fieldwork and instruction to a halt. Most researchers have been furloughed, and training academies and courses have been canceled, with no makeup dates in sight.

Emergency workers, such as firefighters, paramedics and physicians, rely on federal academies to earn national certifications, keep their training current and learn how to keep people safe during a disaster. The prolonged stalemate, though, has forced the cancellation of a five-day course at the National Hurricane Center in Florida for recently hired state and municipal emergency managers. And last month, when the shutdown began, some 50 trainees at the National Fire Academy in Maryland were sent home, their coursework incomplete, said Steve Reaves, the president of the union that represents Federal Emergency Management Agency workers.

W. Craig Fugate, a former FEMA chief, warned that the missed workweeks would be difficult to make up before the next calamity strikes.

“It’s making us less prepared for the next disaster,” Mr. Fugate said. “And the longer it goes, the longer that’s going to be evident.”

FEMA continues to serve communities where disasters have been declared, including wildfire survivors in California and hurricane survivors in Florida, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Texas and the United States Virgin Islands. On a recent afternoon, a FEMA disaster recovery center in the Florida Panhandle saw a steady flow of people seeking assistance to pay for the damage caused by Hurricane Michael.

Brock Long, the FEMA administrator, toured parts of Northwest Florida on Wednesday and acknowledged that while FEMA’s emergency response to Hurricane Michael had been uninterrupted by the shutdown, long-term rebuilding work from Hurricane Irma, which hit in 2017, had stalled.

“Many of the staff have been furloughed at this point, and they’re just not there to process the paperwork and go through the motions,” Mr. Long told reporters in Panama City, adding that permanent construction made public buildings, roads and other infrastructure resilient to future storms.

Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, which is still recovering from Hurricane Florence, urged President Trump in a letter last week to end the impasse, saying that critical rebuilding work “is delayed with every day that federal funds are held in Washington.” The governor, a Democrat, said that North Carolina was waiting for federal approval to spend $168 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and to receive its share of nearly $1.7 billion that Congress set aside in September for storm-affected states.

There is only so much time for forecasters and emergency managers to prepare for the next hurricane season that begins in June, said Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist and union steward at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

“You can’t change the date of hurricane season. That’s what we’re running up against,” said Mr. Blake, who has been working without pay during the shutdown. “You lose those weeks.”

Day-to-day weather forecasting has not stopped during the shutdown. But instead of spending time integrating new data sources into existing forecasting models, to try to improve their accuracy in measuring a storm’s track and intensity, most researchers have been furloughed, Mr. Blake said. A significant upgrade to the Global Forecast System model scheduled for completion by the end of March appears likely to be delayed.

Julie Kay Roberts, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Hurricane Center and other government agencies involved in weather forecasting, said the upgrade required about 50 more days of work.

“NOAA will resume implementation work on this upgrade when appropriations are restored,” she said in a statement, adding that the existing model “will continue to run operationally with no degradation to performance or skill.”

“As we near the beginning of hurricane season in May, we will ensure all necessary preparation has taken place,” Ms. Roberts said.

But before hurricane season, Mr. Reaves said, spring floods and tornadoes can wreak destruction in other regions of the country. Mr. Reaves, who is based in Fort Worth, Tex., also said that rescheduling training sessions and certification courses for emergency workers may be difficult. In some cases, as for firefighters, national certification is tied to particular federal funding for local agencies.

Hurricane training programs — a sort of Hurricane 101 for inexperienced emergency workers in storm-prone states — began in Florida after its devastating hit from Hurricane Andrew in 1992, said Mr. Fugate, the former FEMA chief. The National Hurricane Center holds three one-week courses every year. The courses typically run at capacity and provide instruction at no cost to trainees, Mr. Fugate said.

There are other academies, too. FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Ala., is the only nonmilitary facility in the country that trains emergency workers, including hospital staffs, to respond to attacks by weapons of mass destruction.

In the long run, Mr. Fugate said he was concerned about vacant positions remaining unfilled in chronically understaffed agencies, like the National Weather Service, and that highly skilled scientists — both government employees and contractors — might leave the government for careers in the private sector, with few similarly experienced candidates to replace them.

“We always struggled to keep up with hiring,” Mr. Fugate said. “Now people are going to start asking, ‘How long can I stay in the federal government?’”

Follow Patricia Mazzei on Twitter: @PatriciaMazzei.

Doris Burke contributed research.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Storm Researchers Are on Furlough, Losing Time to Prepare for Hurricane Season. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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