Editor’s note: We are now offering an audio version of our Sunday features. To access, click on the player above. If the value of having a meteorologist on staff at Connecticut’s Department of Emergency Services hadn’t been clear before, it certainly became clear last October. Well, sort o f clear, given the conditions that meteorologist, Josh Cingranelli, was dealing with. Hundreds of wildfires, fueled in part by severe drought, tinder dry vegetation and high winds — all likely exacerbated by climate change — broke out around the state. They put Cingranelli literally on the frontlines helping state officials and fire crews figure out where to go and what to do. “I actually served as the incident meteorologist for the Hawthorne drive fire,” he said referring to the largest blaze — 127 acres in Berlin — that lasted for several weeks and claimed the life of one firefighter. Using a portable weather station borrowed from the U.S. Forest Service in Vermont, Cingranelli was able to collect real-time data on winds, the dew point, how dry it was and more to help the incident management team figure out where to put firefighters for that day. “In addition, several times throughout the day, we would request from the National Weather Service office up in Boston, what’s called a spot forecast,” he said. He would send them the data from his weather station and the NWS would quickly send back an hour-by-hour “very, very detailed look at what they’re expecting fire-weather conditions wise.” A portable weather station, on loan from the U.S. Forest Service in Vermont, was tied into the National Weather Service in Boston.Prediction data from both helped emergency manager deploy firefighters and equipment during a rash of wildfires last fall. Credit: Josh Cingranelli As fires spread around the state, NWS data and predictions — especially for wind shifts — helped the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Forestry Division position the fire crews it oversees.   “We were changing strategy tactics based upon those spot forecasts. That’s really essential to us being successful on the ground, knowing what’s going to happen on an hourly basis and when a front is coming through,” said State Forester Chris Martin. “Without that, we would be making much less informed decisions.” How much longer a collaboration like that may exist is now an open question given the cutbacks, firings and funding decreases the Trump administration has ordered throughout the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA — the NWS’s parent division that itself is within the Commerce Department. But it is just the first of a one-two punch that could greatly diminish the ability of Connecticut, and all other states, to prepare for and respond to climate and weather changes, emergencies and disasters and then clean up from the ones that do occur. Punch number two comes from the Trump assault on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. Funding, personnel, mission and perhaps the entire agency appear to be in jeopardy. While visiting flood-ravaged western North Carolina in January — Trump said he was considering getting rid of FEMA. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, reportedly said in a recent cabinet meeting that it would be eliminated, even as emergency management directors from all over the country were meeting nearby. William H. Turner III, State Emergency Management Director Credit: Department of Emergency Services & Public Protection For Bill Turner, Connecticut’s emergency services director who attended that meeting, the incoming is from all directions. “The pace is just unsustainable, trying to keep track of all this,” said Turner. And, indeed, on Friday he learned that one of FEMA’s most popular programs —Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, BRIC, which the state was using or planning to use for about 20 flood mitigation projects to the tune of more than $116 million in federal grants, had been cancelled. Both agencies were explicitly targeted for drastic reductions in Project 2025, with the NWS potentially being privatized — a move critics say could lead to inconsistencies in weather forecasting around the country and less reliability. Project 2025 also called for FEMA costs to be borne by states far more than they are now, which is typically 75% from FEMA and 25% from the state. Since then the NWS has faced cuts that have hampered basic operations such as weather balloon launches in Albany, one of three offices alongside Boston and Long Island, that provide forecast information, warnings and all manner of data to meteorologists in Connecticut. There were layoffs of about 800 probationary employees, reversed temporarily by courts, though employees for the most part remain on administrative leave. Office consolidations are reportedly under consideration.   Among the many functions FEMA has is to anticipate problems and then respond to them, as shown in this single page from a recent Daily Operations Briefing as extreme storms struck the southern U.S. Credit: FEMA FEMA Beginning with a January executive order by President Donald Trump to set up a council to review FEMA, the agency was hit with multiple actions and edicts from the administration. Those included plans to drastically cut staff and a freeze on many FEMA grant programs used widely by states, including Connecticut, to prevent impacts from climate, weather and other disasters.  A memo in late February indicated there would be a review of grant programs, ostensibly in search of diversity, immigrant recipients and climate change purposes. And on March 18, there was a second executive order from Trump seeking to explore shifting disaster responsibilities from the federal government to states and municipalities. The grants have remained frozen in defiance of multiple court orders requiring their distribution — the most recent of which came on Friday. It follows a filing in January and another in late March by Connecticut Attorney General William Tong and 23 other attorneys general to force the administration to release the funds. Turner said, as of a couple of weeks ago, the state was finally able to get into an online portal to request funds from some programs, something it hadn’t previously been able to do, but there’s no guarantee funds will be awarded. About one dozen funding sources are being held up in Connecticut. Turner’s office manages about $250 million in mostly federal FEMA grants. He said his department is paying out funds to local governments — even without the guarantee the state will be able to recoup funds that the federal government is legally required to pay. About 140 municipalities in the state use federal money to fund local emergency management directors and FEMA money ensures safety around the Millstone Nuclear Power Station, he said. About two-thirds of the 50 positions in Turner’s emergency division are federally funded. A more recent announcement from DHS classified its many grant programs based on their adherence to the Trump administration’s anti-DEI and immigrant dictates — targeting so-called sanctuary jurisdictions. They are color-coded green, yellow and red. Connecticut’s two biggest preparedness and operations grants, the Homeland Security Grant Program and Emergency Management Performance Grants, were classified red. “We are working to understand potential impacts to funding. We have asked DHS for their list of what they consider sanctuary jurisdictions, but they have not provided it,” Turner said. FEMA did not respond to any of The Connecticut Mirror’s questions about whether the state would be penalized due to the state’s use of some of the red- and yellow-coded programs or whether FEMA considered any locations in the state “sanctuaries.” A spokesman provided a statement attributed to DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin that blamed the Biden administration for what she called “illegal aliens” in the country. The statement said in part: “Secretary Noem has directed FEMA to implement additional controls to ensure that all grant money going out is consistent with law and does not go to fraud, waste or abuse, as in the past.” But the BRIC program cancelled on Friday had actually been categorized green and was created during Trump’s first term as a way to prevent the kind of damage FEMA usually is tasked with cleaning up. When asked to explain the move, a FEMA spokesperson offered this statement: “Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are ending non-mission critical programs. BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters. We are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need.” A press release said that that any funds that were not distributed would be returned to the federal government. But it was not clear whether that included funds from projects that were underway and had used some the grant money. The spokesperson did not respond to that question. Either way, Connecticut’s loss will be considerable. It will not receive about $53.6 million for six projects for which funds had been awarded. The biggest chunk would have gone to Resilient Bridgeport, a $60 million project to address longstanding flooding issues in the city. FEMA’s portion would be about $47.6 million — none of which has been paid out. The second largest project was slated for New Haven, which was to have received more than $25 million, also for flood control. It has received less than $383,000 of that so far. FEMA may seek to take back its remaining funds along with those from several other projects. Flood damage on Labored Road, Oxford, on August 19, 2024 after heavy rains caused massive flooding the night before. Most infrastructure damage from the storm is still waiting for funding from FEMA to pay for rebuilding. Credit: Tyler Russell / Connecticut Public The state was already nervous about whether some of the recovery funds it is seeking for last year’s Naugatuck Valley floods in August and the October fire in Berlin will materialize. They’ve been lucky … so far. All individual and household assistance that has been requested has been paid — that’s more than $12 million for more than 2,600 people according to FEMA. About two-thirds went to housing assistance with the rest for a variety of other needs. Small business funds have also been paid. The Small Business Administration did not respond to an email requesting additional information. But assistance for public infrastructure such as roads and municipal buildings, which typically lag behind other forms of assistance, remains vulnerable. A spokesman for FEMA said about $1.2 million had been obligated for 14 of the 171 projects requesting aid. Turner said the estimate of the final total is between $40 and $60 million. Turner also said he and others spent some of their time in Washington talking to members of Congress, recognizing that at the very least, the look and operation of FEMA is likely to change, but that the process for figuring that out should include state officials like him. “We understand that grants may get reduced, or things may have to be given up in the process,” he said. “At a minimum we need to be able to continue to respond and recover from disasters; prepare for all of the above. But the option of just getting rid of FEMA and dumping it all in the states and locals isn’t going to work.” He did not dispute that the FEMA process can be slow and cumbersome, noting the state is still working on closing projects and paying people for recovery efforts related to Hurricane Sandy, which occurred in 2012. “That was a big storm, but that just kind of puts into perspective how long this process can take,” he said. “Even people of FEMA agree we need to find a way to speed that process up.” The state has had a disaster fund on the books since 2013, passed by the legislature in the aftermath of SandyHurricane Irene and the disastrous October snowstorm in 2011. But it’s never been funded. “It’s something we are looking at and if the reasons still exist for why it wasn’t funded,” said Joanna Wozniak-Brown, the climate and infrastructure policy development coordinator within the Office of Policy and Management. In the meantime, Wozniak-Brown notes that the governor’s current budget proposes $15 million in immediate disaster recovery funding for small businesses, municipalities and residents. It also provides for a position at every council of governments to deal with storm water and flooding efforts. “Then we have the resilience bill that is basically the roadmap to putting all these pieces together and identifying our risks and letting folks know what’s in your flood insurance or what’s covered in your insurance or not covered in your insurance,” she said. Wildfire preparation in the governor’s resilience bill was also strengthened in the wake of the recent fires. Wozniak-Brown said that in the face of as yet unknown consequences of the federal cuts, which could take some time to be felt, the play is to pivot, strategize, create redundancies, and prioritize actions. It’s an ongoing process, not a one-time thing, she said. “We’re just going to keep going until we can’t,” she said. “The absence of that is just that we stop, and that’s not an option.” The Hawthorne Drive fire in Berlin burned for several weeks beginning in October fueled by drought, dry conditions and strong winds. One firefighter died. Credit: DEEP Fires FEMA is less of an issue for Martin at DEEP — most of his federal firefighting funds come through the U.S. Forest Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, which also covers salaries for about 20% of personnel in his division. “The state funding from the forest service we’re taking one day at a time,” he said. “I’m on weekly calls with state forestry directors across the country, and no one has not gotten a reimbursement yet.” But there is one FEMA grant that has come into play in connection with the Hawthorne fire. It’s a Fire Management Assistance Grant, F-MAG, which the state is pursuing for the first time to get reimbursed for the costs associated with the fire. “We’re actually still in the process of getting all the paperwork to FEMA,” said Berlin Fire Chief John Massirio. That’s not an inconsiderable task for a volunteer fire department like Berlin’s, not accustomed to keeping track of assets, which in this case included crews and helicopters from Maine, whole units and equipment from New York City and other assistance all the way into Canada as part of the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Compact. “It’s not a guarantee,” Massirio said of the grant – but there was quite a bit of damaged equipment. Martin also has his fingers crossed — along with the town of New Milford — on at least one non-FEMA grant. Even though New Milford, with the largest land mass and tree canopy in the state, had no wildfires last fall, Mayor Pete Bass figured it would be smart to plan for them. The town has become the first in the state to apply for a Community Wildfire Defense Plan grant. The money, which flows through the Forest Service, would enable them to hire a consultant to develop a plan. Then they could apply for a grant to implement it and purchase equipment. The town has a plan for dealing with flooding on Housatonic River, so a fire plan makes sense, Bass said. “This is proper planning to make sure that we can really address issues, especially weather-related ones, in a very efficient manner,” he said. The biggest potential pitfall — the funding for the grant is housed in the Biden Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — a funding rollback target for the Trump administration. “You’re not going to say there’s zero risk of a rescission there, but so far, there hasn’t been talk of that,” Martin said. “That’s definitely a higher risk than some of what we would call traditional funding that dates back decades.” Another forest grant program that has Martin worried are funds for urban forestry. The money comes from another Biden-era target —– the Inflation Reduction Act. Martin said they’re about halfway through the $3 million allotment. A second concern for that grant is that the communities the trees are destined for are the kinds of places the Trump administration is targeting for cuts. “That’s where the focus has been, to get more trees in those areas, to cool those locations down,” Martin said. “You don’t need trees where the trees already exist. So, yeah, it happens to align perfectly with environmental justice, poverty, economic distress.” And then there’s the nexus with the weather service. That’s an everyday event for Martin’s team, not just when there’s a critical need like last fall. “We do the daily Connecticut wildfire danger — high, medium, low, that type of thing,” he said. “We’re very dependent on NOAA.” They’re not the only ones. The National Weather Service makes the calls for warnings and watches through a national, standardized and free system that anyone has access to. Weather “There is a very close relationship between NOAA and FEMA, especially the Weather Service and FEMA and the Weather Service and emergency managers,” said meteorologist Tom Di Liberto. He was a couple of weeks short of completing his probationary period as a public affairs spokesman with the National Weather Service when he was laid off along with 800 other probationary employees. But he’d been with NOAA since 2010 in other departments, including the Climate Prediction Center. “They’re on speed dial. They do briefings before events. When it comes to disaster preparation, it’s about the preparation, right?” Recent reporting by Bloomberg indicated mergers are in the works to combine the Climate Prediction Center, which provides the longer term climate-driven outlooks including for large factors like El Niño, with the Weather Prediction Center, which provides forecast information that is used locally around the country. In addition to the two climate centers, the NWS uses information from the National Hurricane Center, which has already faced job eliminations, including in its hurricane hunter group that flies into those storms. Information from all these units — NOAA-based research, observations, radar and more — is used to produce models, data and all the other information that help meteorologists predict the weather and make the calls for warnings and watches through a national, standardized and free system. Commercial forecast operations like AccuWeather use NOAA for their baseline of information, as do cellphone weather apps, and broadcast weather operations across the country, including local meteorologists in Connecticut. If such a system were to become private and for-profit, it raises questions about whether only wealthy communities could afford to get weather information and, more broadly, how consistent that information would be. NOAA sets the criteria for warnings and watches which means, for example, that the many tornado, thunderstorm and flood warnings issued across multiple states because of last week’s extreme storms meant exactly the same thing in every area. If the task of issuing warning and watches is divided up among many companies, there are concerns that the criteria would not be uniform nationwide. “There’s a huge ethical issue,” Di Liberto said. “It’s a communications nightmare. Who are you going to trust, right? There’s a reason why NOAA produces all the watches and warnings — it’s because you need to have one voice in that sort of situation that people can trust.” Di Liberto also worries that the expected additional loss of personnel — predicted to be about a quarter of the weather service staff — would mean a loss of the most experienced experts as well as some of the newest people being groomed for the future. “You just lost someone’s 20, 30 years of experience forecasting for that area, you can’t replace that sort of knowledge, You’ve taken the chunk out at the top and at the bottom,” he said. “You don’t have enough people to move around to make anything work.” This is especially true in a severe weather situation when everyone’s working around the clock. An AXIOS report last week said Trump administration actions at NOAA that had slowed down contract approvals and extensions resulted in a critical situation as severe storms strafed the East Coast A delay in approval of a software contract extension came within hours of compromising access to an array of forecast data. Cingranelli, the Connecticut emergency department meteorologist, said the NOAA satellites helped him pinpoint hotspots all over the state from the fires last fall. There were 605 fires in 2024, including the outbreak of forest fires in the fall. During tropical storms and hurricanes, FEMA will be embedded at the National Hurricane Center and he’ll be on calls with them. “They’re helping us to figure out, hey, what’s the earliest onset of arrival for wind speed, for tropical storm force wind speeds or hurricane force. They have a full surge department that we’re looking at storm surge impacts in Long Island Sound,” he said. Cingranelli said he likes to always mention a forgotten, if not largely unknown agency, the Northeast River Forecast Center, that’s also based in the weather service. “They give us the forecast for all of the rivers across the state, and if there’s a significant flooding event, numerous times, I’m getting on the phone with the Northeast River Forecast Center and saying, ‘hey, this is what we’re seeing; does your forecast still align with this?’” That could also start to get more difficult because most of the river gauges that do measurements are overseen by the U.S. Geological Service, USGS, also facing cutbacks. Some gauges also have weather stations on them. In yet another headache for Turner, USGS said if the state doesn’t pick up some of their very high cost, the gauges would be decommissioned. “For that price, there’s other technology that we could put in their place and just have our own network,” Turner said. He pointed to New York and Pennsylvania, which have something called mesonets, which are a network of industrial grade automated weather monitoring stations, usually in partnership with a university, at a more reasonable cost. “Long story short, we’re actually in the process of looking at what it would cost us to implement a mesonet here in Connecticut,” Turner said. He’s also considering putting together a 24/7 watch desk, which many larger states have, instead of the on-call system Connecticut uses, which would be preferable especially if cutbacks at NWS and NOAA mean they can’t maintain their 24/7 operation anymore. “It’s a very fragile house of cards right now, and we need them to continue,” Turner said. “It really could be catastrophic in a lot of ways for our state if they go down that path of stopping the National Weather Service and their functionality.” It’s not lost on anyone that the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season starts in less than two months. Colorado State University, one of the key forecasters, last week predicted above normal activity with nine hurricanes, four of them major. Also on Turner’s plate is better training for firefighters in Connecticut who are not generally familiar with wildfire work, which includes hiking, digging trenches and fire lines, coaxing fire direction and allowing burning in ways that may be unfamiliar to those who generally fight building fires. There’s the question of whether to invest in more wildfire equipment, including proper clothing for firefighters — not the heavy, bulky kind they use for house fires. “It’s a difficult situation to plan for because it doesn’t happen often. Therefore, we don’t have a ton of resources in state,” he said. “But at the same time, had the timing been different, where it wasn’t the end of the season, where those out-of-state crews from other states or even Canada were not available to help us — what does that look like?” In the meantime, Turner is stuck waiting for FEMA to make decisions on the grants that are his department’s lifeline. “It’s kind of like radio silence,” he said. “When are we going to feel the impacts? It’s a terrible climate, just in the sense of uncertainty right now.” Even after decisions are made, there’s the likelihood they will play out in the courts for a long time. “At the end of the day, our work doesn’t stop, so we just have to keep going. But it’s not a fun environment to be operating in,” he said. ...read more read less