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ERN NEWS, HURRICANE SEASON AND BEYOND
WE PROVIDE DETAILED INFORMATION BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER HURRICANE EVENTS, with explanatory journalism year round.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE USE OF A.I. IN HURRICANE FORECASTING
HURRICANE MELISSA AND A.I. USEAGE
FROM THE NY TIMES ABOUT A.I. HELPING TO IMPROVE HURRICANE FORECASTS:
Last fall, three days before Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that the storm would strengthen rapidly from the least dangerous category to the deadliest. After that judgment turned out correct — among many accurate predictions the center was able to make during the unusually volatile storm — the forecasters attributed their success to artificial intelligence, which they incorporated earlier that year into their methodology.
Now, DeepMind, a Google unit that built the A.I. model, argues that the Melissa achievement was no fluke.
FREE, OPOEN LINK TO THE TIMES ARTICLE:
specific advice on how to prepare your house for hurricaNES
When the winds start blowing, its too late to do major preps
The National Hurricane Center has a considerable amount of advice at https://nhc.noaa.gov but you can also go directly to another site for detailed warnings about your particular area and what to do now before the season and when a storm is forecast to head your way. This is valuable help that should be carefully considered and acted on. https://flash.org/prepare-your-home/
PHOTO BELOW, ASHVILLE, N.C. AFTERMATH OF FLOODING (2024)
WESTERN N. CAROLINA RUNS OUT OF HELP
Photographs by Allison Joyce
- Sept. 29, 2025Updated 9:07 a.m. ET
Five years ago, North Carolina embarked on a bold experiment to road test the idea that providing nutritious food, safe housing and transportation for doctors’ visits can help fragile Medicaid recipients stay healthy and avoid costly hospital stays.
For Krista Shalda, a single mother of two boys with complex medical needs, that meant receiving a weekly box of fresh produce. The provisions made it easier to stick to the special diet that reduced her 15-year-old’s trips to the emergency room.
Kellie Prince, who learned she had become homeless while recuperating from spinal surgery, was given a motel room for several weeks so she and her family didn’t have to sleep in a car in the hospital parking lot.
And for Debra Hensley, 60, who is partially blind and physically disabled, the new roof and electrical work paid for by the Medicaid program, the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, or HOP, allowed her to stay in the aging trailer she shares with her teenage grandson.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that HOP saved my life,” said Ms. Hensley, gesturing to holes in the ceiling that had previously channeled rain water into her living room.
By many accounts, the $650 million set side for North Carolina’s Medicaid experiment was a success, and it enjoyed bipartisan support in the state’s Republican-led General Assembly.
An analysis by the UNC School of Medicine found the program saved $1,000 annually for each of the 13,000 Medicaid recipients enrolled in the pilot, which covers three rural swaths of the state.
But the program is shutting down, an early casualty of the cuts to Medicaid that Congress approved in July. In declining to renew funding, state Republican leaders cited looming reductions in federal health care spending in President Trump’s legislation, which extends tax cuts and slashes social safety net programs.
State lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to reverse course and fund the pilot for another five years, but many participating organizations have already discontinued services, and some have shut down entirely.
“There’s a lot of heartache and disappointment to watch the demise of something that was stabilizing the community and helping people get back on their feet,” said Laurie Stradley, chief executive of Impact Health, a nonprofit in Asheville that helped administer the program in western North Carolina. “We’re going to see ripple effects for years to come.”
a link to bloomberg news is included with this story
DEATH THREATS TO THOSE TRYING TO HELP
BLOOMBERG REPORTS THAT THREATS AGAINST FEMA STAFF CAUSED MAJOR FEAR AND DISTRUPTIONS DURDING LAST YEAR'S HURRICANE SEASON.
Chaos Inside FEMA as Death Threats Distract From Hurricane Response
Internal documents show how online conspiracies and personal attacks disrupted FEMA during back-to-back hurricanes last year.
By Zahra Hirji, Davey Alba, and Jason LeopoldSeptember 18, 2025 at 9:00 AM EDTSave
As a major storm rushed toward Florida last October, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the time faced a different kind of threat. Police had shown up in force to a rental property she owned as a result of a prank call, in a potentially dangerous attack known as "swatting."
As back-to-back Hurricanes Helene and Milton sparked a torrent of online conspiracies, FEMA officials faced harassment and death threats, according to hundreds of pages of agency emails and other documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News. The records shed new light on how disaster-related misinformation affects the government's emergency response, sucks up internal resources, and puts staff at risk.
Deanne Criswell, who ran FEMA under President Joe Biden, learned about the swatting situation as she was about to brief TV viewers on Milton, one of the most powerful storms on record to develop in the Gulf of Mexico. “It was a very unsettling feeling,” she said in a recent interview, thinking back on how she juggled her concern for her renters along with preparing Floridians for the storm.
Many of the attacks outlined in the documents have not previously been reported, including the doxxing of at least seven senior FEMA staffers. In those incidents sensitive personal information, such as home addresses, was published online for the purpose of harassment. The records also reveal challenges the agency faced as it tried to control the situation.
The incidents followed an online wave of disinformation suggesting FEMA was mishandling the response to the hurricanes that pummeled Florida and North Carolina in the lead up to the presidential election. Among the debunked claims swirling at the time were reports that agency workers had seized property from survivors and confiscated donations.
The offensive diverted agency time and resources to set the record straight and protect personnel. “It made my staff nervous,” said Criswell. “It made people in the community nervous. They didn’t know who to believe. They didn’t know who to trust.”
The threat of misinformation continues to loom over the agency at a time when President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have made steep cuts to its staffing and funding, including pulling back on some of the resources FEMA used last fall to combat threats. In the aftermath of deadly Texas floods in July, for example, conspiracy theories online blamed cloud seeding.
HERE'S A LINK TO THE FULL ARTICLE ON BLOOMBERG NEWS:
Reporting from Washington
Aug. 25, 2025, 8:00 a.m. ET
Employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote to Congress on Monday warning that the Trump administration had reversed much of the progress made in disaster response and recovery since Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast two decades ago.
The letter to Congress, titled the “Katrina Declaration,” rebuked President Trump’s plan to drastically scale down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response — and more costs — to the states. It came days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever strike the United States.
“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the FEMA employees wrote in the letter.
They added that they hoped their warnings would “come in time to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people such an event would represent.”
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FROM THE LA TIMES:
LA TIMES WITH A LINK BELOW
As federal job eliminations struck the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service on Thursday, scientists and environmental advocates denounced the cuts, saying they could cause real harm to Americans.
The full extent of the layoffs across NOAA were not immediately clear, but Democratic legislators said hundreds of scientists and experts had been notified of terminated employment. NOAA — which includes the National Hurricane Center and the Tsunami Warning Center — is the latest in a string of federal agencies targeted for cuts by billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“Musk’s sham mission is bringing vital programs to a screeching halt,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, wrote in a statement Thursday. “People nationwide depend on NOAA for free, accurate forecasts, severe weather alerts, and emergency information. Purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.”
FURTHER ALONG IN THE ARTICLE:
Tom Di Liberto, a longtime scientist and spokesperson for NOAA’s headquarters in Washington, was among those who received a termination email Thursday, along with at least six others in his office. Although he wasn’t surprised by the decision — having watched several other federal agencies deal with similar cuts — he said he was still extremely disappointed and feared for NOAA’s mission.
“This is not something you would do if you cared about the safety of Americans ... the health of the oceans,” Di Liberto said. He had worked at NOAA since 2010, first on contract for several years before being hired full-time in March 2023.
“We weren’t just hired — a lot of us were working with NOAA for a very long period,” he said. He also noted that his termination email cited that he was fired “because of his ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs” — though he said he had received glowing performance reviews.
(ERN NEWS comment: these kinds of emails received by federal employees have used the same insulting language as a reason for people being dismissed even though there is no way a massive evaluation process could have taken place in a matter of days. This language was used either as a legal cover tactic or simply because the person sending it out was irresponsible and completely callus toward the federal workers. The wording, to the employees, represents insult to injury. You are not merely losing your income, you are no good, too.)
We at ERN NEWS, like all news media, rely every day, hour by hour, on NOAA and the National Weather Service. These organizations gather mountains of data and process it constantly. Without these sources the media ecosphere built around them would fall flat on its face. If they are weakened and wounded, the quality of information the public receives will decline dramatically.
NOTE: SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED TO READ THE FULL LA TIMES ARTICLE
NEW YORK TIMES STORY
Trump Team Plans Deep Cuts at Office That Funds Recovery From Big Disasters
Christopher Flavelle has covered U.S. disaster recovery programs for almost a decade.
- Feb. 20, 2025 Updated 12:28 p.m. ET
The Trump administration plans to all but eliminate the office that oversees America’s recovery from the largest disasters, raising questions about how the United States will rebuild from hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities made worse by climate change.
The Office of Community Planning and Development, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, pays to rebuild homes and other recovery efforts after the country’s worst disasters, such as Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida.
The administration plans to cut the staff in that office by 84 percent, according to a document obtained by The New York Times. The number of workers would be cut to 150, from 936 when Mr. Trump took office last month.
Those cuts could slow the distribution of recovery money to North Carolina and other recent disasters, depending how quickly they happen.