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Fired employee says NOAA layoffs will affect storm preparations

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Andy Hazelton is a hurricane hunter.

LEE: And you were saying there's like a version of this on the plane.

HAZELTON: Oh, yes, much more sophisticated version of it. You know --

LEE: OK.

HAZELTON: -- there's anemometers and all sorts of instruments, radar and things like that.
 

anemometer [͵ænəˋmɑmətɚ] n.【气】风速计

LEE (voice-over): As a physical scientist working at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, he has flown into the eye of the storm countless times, including catastrophic hurricanes, Helene, Dorian and Ian.

HAZELTON: You basically fly through the storm three to four times, and then the forecasters are getting that data in real time. They're using that for their advisories to tell people, hey, this is where the storm is, is how strong it is.

LEE (voice-over): But as of last week, Andy is out of a job.

LEE: And your last day was Thursday?

HAZELTON: Last Thursday. Yes, ma'am.

LEE (voice-over): He was one of the hundreds of employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, whose roles were abruptly terminated as part of the Trump administration's sweeping efforts to drastically slim down the federal government.

And it's not just hurricane forecasting. Most divisions of NOAA, which researches everything from the weather to oceans to biodiversity, were affected by the cuts, raising alarm bells across the scientific community about the potential impacts on public safety and the economy.

[17:35:18]

HAZELTON: This is Biscayne Bay we're out of the Black Point Marina. Right there, at that point, there is right where Hurricane Andrew, the center of it, made landfall back in 1992.

LEE (voice-over): Andrew was the strongest hurricane to hit South Florida in 1992, only the fourth category five hurricane that century to make landfall in the U.S. leaving in its path catastrophic destruction.

HAZELTON: This is the track forecast error.

LEE (voice-over): In the 30 plus years since Hurricane Andrew, Andy and scientists like him have helped make huge improvements to hurricane modeling and forecasts.

HAZELTON: Your five day here is only 100 miles off.

LEE (voice-over): When he wasn't out on storm flight missions, Andy built codes and graphics that helped predict the path and strength of future hurricanes.

HAZELTON: A five day forecast now is as accurate as a one day forecast in Hurricane Andrew. So think about that. You know, you have five days to prepare versus one. You can convince people to evacuate. You can do a lot more things to prepare your home.

LEE: So we've really come a long way.

HAZELTON: We have.

LEE (voice-over): Right up until he was fired, Andy says he and his colleagues had been busy preparing for the upcoming hurricane season just a few months away. Now he is entirely unsure what the mass firings at NOAA will mean for the unfinished work.

LEE: Do you worry that we're about to go backwards when it comes to the science?

HAZELTON: I do. I mean, I hope, you know, I know that the colleagues I still have there, you know, they're going to work hard and do their best. But, you know, when you have a few people in places that were already understaffed, it just gets harder and harder.

LEE (voice-over): And as he wonders about his own future, Andy, like so many Floridians, is also wondering about the next hurricane.

LEE: What does it mean for you that you can't do the work that you want to be doing?

HAZELTON: I worry for the safety of, you know, the people here, my -- my friends, my neighbors, our family and across the board. I mean, here in South Florida, like I said, you know, we've been pretty lucky since -- since Andrew. But, you know, if you look historically, that luck won't last forever.