Rep. Joaquin Castro said Sunday there should be an investigation into whether staffing shortages at the National Weather Service made it harder to respond to the devastating flash flooding in Central Texas.
“I don’t want to sit here and say conclusively that that was the case, but I do think it should be investigated and not having enough personnel is never helpful,” Mr. Castro, Texas Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The New York Times reported that Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union representing workers at the weather service, said that the National Weather Service’s San Angelo office, which oversees the devastated areas in Central Texas, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster and meteorologist in charge.
The warning coordination meteorologist reportedly accepted the early retirement package the Trump administration offered federal workers as part of its efforts to downsize the federal workforce.
The Guadalupe River flooding left more than 50 people dead, including children and more than two dozen girls were still missing Sunday as rescuers searched for survivors.
The fast-moving waters rose more than 20 feet early Friday. It swept away homes and cars and devastated Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp.
Questions have since intensified regarding why a more thorough warning was not given.
The National Weather Service issued a flood warning on Thursday afternoon, predicting up to 7 inches of rainfall in South Central Texas.
Local and state officials have sought to pin some of the blame on the inaccurate weather forecasts that failed to predict the severity of the rainfall.
Others are trying to determine what sort of impact the Trump administration’s DOGE Cuts — including the firing of hundreds of weather forecasters — had on the response and the alert.
Mr. Castro said it is not helpful to “have missing key personnel from the National Weather Service not in place to help prevent these tragedies.”
For that reason, he said he supports an investigation.
At the moment, he said the rescue mission is “intense.”
“The priority is on making sure that those girls are found and are saved and anybody else who is missing at this point, and then I think after that we have to figure out in the future how we make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
