(The Hill)  With hurricane season officially underway, worries are mounting around whether President Trump’s cuts to the federal government have endangered the nation’s disaster response.

The concern is particularly pronounced on the Gulf Coast, where ominous storm systems are already beginning to form amid widespread staffing shortages at the area’s critical weather stations.

The anxiety found a new focus this week after David Richardson, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reportedly told employees that he wasn’t aware the U.S. even had a hurricane season.

The Department of Homeland Security promptly dismissed those reported comments, which came at the eve of a forecasted above-average season, as a “joke.” 

But the job cuts at federal agencies that will both warn the public of impending storms and move in after to help them recover are very real, and have left current and former disaster management officials sounding the alarm.

When disaster strikes, “will they come? Will they not come?” asked Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones. “If they do, at what level will they be responding?”

Her flood-prone Houston-area district home to two of the country’s most dangerous dams — sits on the front lines of the region’s hurricane exposure.

The departures and firings at FEMA and the National Weather Service (NWS) have left the nation’s forecasting system “at the snapping point,” Tom Fahy, head of the NWS union, said on Monday.

The former head of the National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), meanwhile, warned of “degraded” forecasts that would mean communities face more uncertainty about impending dangers.

This week, a former FEMA chief compared the current state of the agency to what it looked like before the deadly debacles of 2005, when Hurricanes Rita and Katrina killed more than 2,000 people.

Tulane University’s Stephen Murphy, who helped lead New Orleans’ recovery after Katrina, said the consequences of FEMA delays like those seen after recent tornadoes in Arkanas — would be “catastrophic.”

“You have a city that’s underwater no health care, no power, no water. The population cannot live there,” Murphy said.

The restructuring of FEMA and NWS tracks with proposals in Project 2025, a policy blueprint tied to the Trump campaign that calls for pushing FEMA’s responsibilities to the states, reducing disaster declarations and privatizing NOAA while “disbanding” its climate research.”

The administration’s goal, said Stony Brook historian Christopher Sellers, is to dismantle the science and data infrastructure behind federal disaster relief and recast those efforts as “the main threats to Americans,” rather than climate change itself.

Much of that agenda is already in motion. In early May, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem fired FEMA Administrator Craig Hamilton hours after he told Congress that eliminating the agency as Trump has proposed would not be “in the best interests of the American people.”

That firing which drew pushback from Senate Republicans came after sweeping cuts. Since January, the Department of Governmental Efficiency has shed roughly 20 percent of FEMA’s workforce, with as much as a third expected to leave by year’s end.

And NOAA has also lost hundreds of staff, with half its offices reporting vacancies of 20 percent or more by April.

In remarks before Congress on Thursday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick insisted those cuts have had “no effect on preparedness,” telling lawmakers it is “fake news and inappropriate to suggest a single meteorologist, or hydrologist was fired.”

In the case of the critical NWS office in Houston, that was technically true. Senior meteorologists there opted for early retirement during the cuts but their positions, frozen for months, remain unfilled as hurricane season begins.

The administration also scrapped billions in FEMA grants aimed at strengthening climate resilience — programs it derided as “wasteful” and “politicized.”

“This was a generational set of infrastructure projects,” one North Carolina town manager told the Associated Press, “and it just poof went away.”

Richardson, who took over FEMA as part of a new cadre of part-time senior leadership, has become a lightning rod for concerns about the agency’s direction. One FEMA staffer told CNN that the front office now includes “zero people with actual disaster recovery experience.”

Just 10 days before hurricane season, Richardson scrapped FEMA’s Biden-era strategic plan which focused on climate adaptation and vulnerable communities telling staff he would “run right over” any internal opposition. On Wednesday, he abruptly reinstated the plan without explanation, according to Wall Street Journal reporting that Homeland Security also dismissed as “fake news.”

The back-and-forth deepened internal unrest. More than a dozen senior officials resigned in May, including second-in-command MaryAnn Tierney, who wrote that the agency’s new direction “lacks a clear end state or plan” and had been put in place without regard to our ”moral obligations to the American people.” 

Many of the most critical Gulf Coast weather offices including Houston, Tampa Bay, Fla., and Lake Charles, La. are operating without their lead meteorologists. Others, such Miami and Mobile, Ala., are among the one-third of offices with major staffing gaps.

Key weather offices across the Gulf including Houston, Tampa, Lake Charles, Miami, and Mobile are missing lead meteorologists or critical staff, part of what Harris County emergency official Brian Murray called a “brain drain.”

“A lot of institutional knowledge just walked out the door,” Murray said. Where there were once experienced officials to call or that knew to call him, and what resources he might need “now there’s a lot of empty chairs. That’s really unsettling.”

Houston is in especially dire shape, missing not only its meteorologist-in-charge but every senior role, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) warned in an early May letter.

After months of criticism, the administration announced on Monday it would begin hiring for “mission critical” roles after earlier attempting to reassign dozens of staff to understaffed offices. 

But former NOAA officials said those moves were no substitute for a full team.

“They can move the deckchairs on the Titanic, but they just don’t have enough bodies to do the job they are supposed to do,” warned retired NWS forecaster James Franklin.

Others warned that the damage to FEMA and NOAA may be hard to undo. Even as buyouts have drained senior ranks of experienced officials, while firings of early-career staff have emptied the pipeline of “your bright innovative minds,” one former NWS meteorologist warned the AP. 

Much of hurricane response, especially evacuations, plays out in advance, said Tulane’s Murphy. “We have to initiate evacuation strategies well in advance,” he said. “That means those assets have to be in motion and arrive ahead of time.”

If coordination falters, he warned, the die may already be cast by the time the storm hits.