The children of the summer camp did not have to die in the floods of Texas

“There will be people who die.” This striking warning was issued in February by Daniel Swain, climatologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, after US President Donald Trump sought to dismiss more than 800 NOAA employees, the national ocean and atmospheric administration, which houses the National Weather Service. “Upon entering the severe season and hurricane season, it cannot be good,” Al Roker, the chief meteorologist of NBC News later, later this month in an article on social networks. In May, five former Directors of the National Weather Service wrote that budget cuts could leave the weather forecast offices “so little effective that there will be unnecessary lifestyles”.

Now, the heartbreaking news of Texas, where at least 27 children died in sudden floods while several months of rain fell in just a few hours, gives a bitter confirmation of these not approved warnings. The Trump budget cuts and its former Elon Musk ally insisted that only waste, fraud and abuse have indeed contributed to unnecessary loss of life.

She “had the time of her life”, the mourning uncle of Renee Smajstrla, 8 years old, wrote on social networks after the body of the daughter was found near the Mystic camp, a Christian summer camp on the banks of the Guadalupe river, in the center of Texas. Almost a rain foot fell there last Friday, causing an increase of 26 feet of 26 feet in 45 minutes. Flood waters quickly swallowed up the camp; Renee was one of the 27 young campers and advisers who lost their lives. A total of 89 deaths related to floods have been confirmed so far; Research continues for dozens of missing people.

The National Weather Service, which has lost 500 personnel positions from Trump-Musk’s budget cuts, provides data and analysis that informs practically all weather forecasts that Americans receive, whether via television or radio broadcasts or their mobile phone applications. Warnings to campers of an imminent sudden flood? Emergency alerts on coastal residents as a hurricane approach? A winter weather notice for ski vacationers linked to the mountains? These services and countless other rescue services were endangered by the illegal executive order of Trump which reduced the workforce of the NOAA.

The first reports indicate that the problem in Texas was that budget cuts paralyzed the capacity of the National Weather Service to warn residents of sudden floods coming in the opposite direction. It is not that service scientists did not plan the potential floods sufficiently with precision; The service communications staff had been so narrowed that forecasts were not quickly shared with public officials and emergencies. Only a few hours after the service issued its storm and a flood warning that security officials adopted this warning to the general public, Molly Taft told Wired. “Clearly, there was a ventilation between the moment when the warning was issued and how people got it, and I think that is really what we have to talk about,” Texas Matt Lanza told Taft.

As climate change leads to increasingly volatile and destructive weather conditions across the United States and the world, understanding and communication of the climate link with the public is essential to save lives and guarantee that society can continue to work. But science can only help save lives if government officials take this science seriously. And Trump and almost all of his Republican compatriots continue to deny the ultimate cause of the extreme weather increasingly devastating people and communities: overheating of the planet caused by oil, gas and coal.

Trump denies all responsibility, recognizing only that “it’s so horrible to look” tragedy in Texas. But Project 2025, the plan for the reduction of public spending prepared by the best Trump advisers and reflected in the bill on taxes and expenses that he reported the same day of the Texas flood, explicitly exhorted massive cuts to the NOAA, including the elimination of the National Weather Service. The justification for the 2025 project? The NOAA was “one of the main engines in the climate change alarms industry and, as such, harmful to the prosperity of the future United States”.

Say that parents now overwhelmed in a backdrop on the 27 girls and advisers whose life was interrupted last Friday evening. Publishing a photo of her eight -year niece with a radiant smile and a gap tooth, the uncle of Renee Smajstrla comforted herself in her Christian faith, writing that their family is “grateful that she is with her friends” when death took her and that she “will forever live her best life at the Mystic Camp”. But Renee could have had many years of life on Earth first if her government had not betrayed him.