Alejandra Borunda
speaker
325 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 4 Sep
Alejandra Borunda’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And I actually think that's a very human instinct.
And Brian agrees.
Or maybe you're in one of the thousands of communities that are trying to prepare for disasters, you know, like hurricanes or wildfires, and you apply for federal funding, that's completely changing too.
Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh.
Yeah, so if you checked the weather on your phone this morning, you interacted with NOAA. These are the scientists that make the weather forecasts. They track hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and droughts. They help warn people about those things. They make nautical charts to keep ships from running aground. They track space weather to make sure commercial flights are safe.
They manage fisheries. They protect species like whales and corals. I could keep going. They do a lot.
Yeah, so staffing is definitely one thing. Hundreds of people have been fired so far. We know that's already affecting weather forecasting in some parts of the country. It's delayed the opening of some fishing seasons, which is a big deal for coastal communities. There are plans to essentially eliminate one of the research wings, you know, along with other climate work across the agency.
And there are more budget cuts on the way. So a draft proposal from the White House for 2026 would reduce NOAA's current budget by more than 25%.
Yeah, so the budget proposal would keep funding even for the National Weather Service, right? That's the weather forecasting part. But, you know, in practice, they've been hit hard already because of those people that have been fired. And some scientists think they're already seeing weather forecasts get less accurate.
Yeah. So there's a lot of funding that the federal government provides for preparing for disasters. A lot. FEMA has awarded more than four and a half billion dollars since 2020 to help communities prepare. You know, these are grants they've already told communities that they're getting. They're on the way. But now they've been canceled. OK, so what were these grants for?
OK, yeah, here's an example. So there's this tiny community of Depew, Illinois. They have a big problem, which is when it rains a lot, it causes flooding and it floods their sewage treatment plant. It gets inundated with water. And that means people may not be able to flush their toilets. Daniel Hoffert, the village president of Depew, told me about it.
Yeah, you need that sewage to run. Exactly. Because if the plant isn't working, the sewage actually backs up in the pipes. It even spills into the basements of people's houses. And in past storms, they've had more than 100 houses that were affected. Fixing it means moving the wastewater treatment plant to higher ground. And that's expensive, you know, $25 million.
And Hofford says it would take them decades to collect enough tax revenue because, you know, only about 1,500 people live there. So he applied to FEMA for this program specifically for projects that prevent disaster damage.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the idea is you pay a little bit now so you don't have to pay a lot more later. And studies show that it really is cheaper to prepare infrastructure for disasters instead of just paying to rebuild it after a disaster hits. So this grant program, it's called BRIC, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities. It was actually started during Trump's first administration.
And it kind of marked this big shift that disaster experts have been pushing for for decades. But now, you know, it's being canceled. So what will that mean for the community of Depew? Yeah. So they had been told the grant was already awarded to them. They've been working on it. They've been planning and preparing for years. And Hoffert was actually expecting the money this year.
And then he heard it was canceled.
Yeah, I mean, Hoffert says they're looking for any other option at this point, but there just aren't a lot of sources for funding like that. The federal government really has been key for rural communities like his. What is the Trump administration saying about why these grants have been canceled?
So FEMA put out a statement saying the program is canceled because it's ineffective and part of an effort to root out waste and fraud. And, you know, Hoffert takes issue with that.
And his community is definitely not alone. There are many local governments and tribes that were told they had grants, they were on the way. And that's for things like, you know, tornado shelters and schools and preparing communities for wildfires.
Yeah, there's a lot of concern about that as well, because FEMA needs a lot of people to respond when disasters hit. The agency has already lost more than 200 people. It's expected to lose hundreds more with the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the agency. And Trump has said he maybe wants FEMA to go away completely.
Showing 281–300 of 325 · page 15 of 17
← Previous
Next →