The Workings Of the Proposed National Disaster Review Board

[This is an update of a Post that appeared in December, 2024]

Investigating the 2011 Joplin Tornado

An Outline of the National Disaster Review Board

Regardless of whether there is an attempt to fix NOAA through incremental improvement or whether there is a “divorce” of the NWS from NOAA, neither has much of a chance to be successful without a National Disaster Review Board (NDRB) modeled after the hugely successful National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Last week's independent report on the NWS's failing tornado warning program only confirms this near certainty. 

Accountability is not a natural part of the culture inside the Beltway. The NDRB will be an essential step in that direction. 

Regardless of our political preferences and affiliations, I believe most of us can agree on the following:

• Mega-disasters (i.e., July 4 Texas Hill Country flash flood [likely worst since 1886], Los Angeles wildfire, southern Appalachians floods after Helene, Maui Wildfire, etc.) are increasing. The cause(s) of the increase, for this discussion, is irrelevant. 

• We have not had a major earthquake in decades nor a major volcanic eruption. Either of those could dwarf the destruction and loss of life that occurred in Texas or the Appalachians.

• Emergency management in the U.S.A., while better than four decades ago, is still badly lacking in some parts of the nation. As of December 2024, FEMA, which should be setting an example for professionalism and effectiveness, was so bad that many have concluded the nation would be better off without it in its then-present form (see: here and here, note that one is left-wing and the other, right). 

• President Trump has made changes to FEMA. It is unknown whether they will be successful.

(above) Dr. Cliff Mass, in December
More from Cliff at the pink link, below

• The quality of some types of forecasts and warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS) have regressed (!) in quality the last ~15 years. Others have noted the United States’ National Weather Service is 30 years behind some of the Europeans’ similar agencies. 

• Speaking of 30 years, that is the age of the NWS’s radars which are failing at an accelerating rate. Spare parts are no longer available. Yet – incredibly – the NWS wants to wait until 2028 to even decide what type of radar (traditional rotating antenna; phased-array, the latter has been researched for a quarter-century without much developmental success; or rotating phased array) they want. After the 2028 decision, it will take additional years to write specifications and begin procurement. The NWS tells us to expect the new radars around 2040 -- we cannot wait that long!

• The National Weather Service keeps its own accuracy statistics. Even if the statistics are accurate, investigating itself is a conflict of interest. 

• Congress often doesn’t know where to turn for independent expertise, at least according to two members of Congress.

• The USA has a deficit of $38 trillion that is growing. While the NWS desperately needs investment, it must be done in an intelligent manner with a decision primarily made by practitioners rather than researchers. 

I’ll say this with total confidence: If we get “the big one” a powerful earthquake in California or a Cascadia (Washington and Oregon) earthquake plus major tsunami, with our precarious financial situation, it may sink the nation (via the mass inflation needed to recover). If you thought COVID was bad, it was nothing compared to the disruption the above will bring and I don’t just mean in the West, I'm referring to the entire nation. 

Hopefully, I have convinced you of the desperate need for a National Disaster Review Board. 

The idea, first advanced by Bill Hook and Dr. Gina Eosco after Katrina in 2006 and again by yours truly after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 has received dozens of endorsements, especially recently. Still we are nearly 20 years after the concept was first proposed during which things have only gotten worse. We cannot wait; Congress and the Trump Administration need to act.

On the latter count, I note and appreciate Dr. Neil Jacobs', President Trump's nominee to head NOAA, endorsement of the NDRB during his confirmation hearing last week. 

Operations of the NDRB

I don’t believe any single individual knows how to repair or mitigate this myriad of issues, which is why we need a panel of genuine experts. These are the reasons why we urgently need a National Disaster Review Board. 

• The board must be comprised of expert, applied (not theoretical) meteorologists, hydrologists, seismologists, oceanographers, and warning communication specialists. Taking the Helene catastrophe as an example, they would be on the ground literally within hours (like the NTSB’s “go teams”) via a leasing agreement with a private jet company.

• In addition to applied geoscientists, the Board must have social scientists who specifically have experience in the field of storm warnings and disaster response (yes, there are such people). 

• Once on site, they would observe the response from federal and local emergency management, hospitals, charities, et cetera. They would review NWS forecasts and warnings (local and national) as well as local broadcast meteorologists and warnings from commercial weather companies. The goal will not be to merely list what went wrong but to learn and promulgate best practices. 

• The Board will have subpoena power but no law enforcement power. Like the NTSB, its findings will not be admissible in litigation. The purpose is to encourage the maximum candor from its interviewees. 

• After this data is compiled, outside experts consulted (when necessary), and public hearings held, the Board's official report will be published, and the gathered information placed into a database anyone can access. [If anyone would like to see a National Transportation Safety Board report for comparison, a NTSB preliminary report is here. It involves the January crash at Reagan National Airport.]

Then -- at long last -- the U.S. will have what European and other nations have: a systematic way of improving emergency response that will save lives and save huge amounts of money. The Los Angeles Wildfire is estimated to have cost $250 billion. If better practices can save just 5%, that would be a huge $12.5 billion. 

In addition to the above, the NDRB will take over the compilation of the accuracy statistics of National Weather Service’s storm-related forecasts and warnings. The era of the NWS investigating itself will, thankfully, come to an end. 

The NTSB keeps an online library of documents related to topics related to transportation accidents. If an aircraft designer wants to learn about the effects of icing on small aircraft it is easy to find by going to the NTSB. Nothing likes this exists in the field of natural disasters. The Disaster Review Board will create one. 

The headquarters of the National Disaster Review Board should be located far distant from Washington. It will help to insulate the board from politics and will keep it attuned to what the nation needs, not what political winds dictate. 

I suggest the Innovation Campus of Wichita State University. 

Wichita is at the dead-center of the nation and is the #1 city in the nation for aircraft manufacturing with multiple plane leasing companies there. Wichita State has been chosen to modernize the military's fleet of "doomsday" 747's (where the president can command our military in the case of a major war). 

WSU is a university with exceedingly smart people but does not have a major program in meteorology or emergency management. That is good! We need fresh ideas from the NDRB, not a rehash of the things that aren't working. 

Finally, by law, the NDRB will be forbidden to get into climate change. The United States already has the U.S. Climate Assessment for that. The Climate Assessment's budget is a stunning $5 billion per year. The last thing we need is duplication.

On a discussion board for meteorologists and storm chasers, I did a search on the phrase "another Joplin" in the context of a race against time before another preventable mega-disaster occurred absent a NDRB. That poorly warned tornado in 2011 took a stunning 161 lives -- by far the worst of the tornado warning era. 

I wrote it 17 times in 12 years as I was terrified "another Joplin" -- with a preventable triple digit fatality rate -- would occur unless we created and heeded the work of a National Disaster Review Board. Horribly, it has happened with the Texas Flood with 130 deaths (so far, 106 are missing). 

We are in a race against time. Please email (using their web sites, it is easy) your congresspeople and the White House advocating a NDRB at the earliest possible opportunity.