Bipartisan support picks up for a natural disaster review board

As Texans seek answers about the Hill Country floods, some top meteorologists and policymakers are calling for the creation of a disaster review board modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates all civil aviation accidents and major transportation incidents.

The idea of a nonpartisan, independent board to review weather-related disasters is nothing new, but it appears to be gaining fresh traction after the flooding in Texas left more than 120 people dead and another 170 missing.

During his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Neil Jacobs endorsed the idea when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked what he would do to ensure that Americans can better respond to emergency weather warnings.

“We also need more data and doing post-storm assessments,” Jacobs said. “One of the things that I’ve envisioned, because I’ve worked on several aviation accidents with NTSB, is something along the lines of what they do but for weather disasters because we need the data to understand what went right, what went wrong, whether people got the warnings.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken this torch up before.

Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Bill Cassidy, R-La., have introduced several bills since 2020 that would create a Natural Disaster Safety Board modeled after the NTSB. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and several GOP colleagues have introduced companion bills in the House.

In 2022, the House approved legislation that included a measure to create a Natural Disaster Safety Board, but it died in the Senate.

The bills would have created an independent, seven-member board with subpoena power to perform fact-finding and identify the underlying causes of disasters’ impact without assigning blame.

Cassidy and Schatz did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they think there’s renewed momentum on Capitol Hill for creating a disaster review panel. Porter is no longer a member of Congress.

In an email to NBC News, Congress’ only meteorologist, Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill., said he was working with colleagues to create an NTSB-styled program to investigate deadly storms.

“It would be amazing if meteorologists could have access to investigative reports that help us to figure out what — if anything — went wrong and what we can do in the future to be better,” Sorensen said, adding that “clearly the tragic floods in Texas would benefit from such a report.”

Sorensen’s state was also hit with a powerful deluge this week, with about 5 inches of rain falling in 90 minutes over Garfield Park, on Chicago’s west side, prompting multiple rescues.

The Chicago and Texas floods were two of four extreme rainfall events in less than a week that researchers would expect once every thousand years.

In meteorology and disaster management circles, the concept of an independent board to review disasters has percolated for years. Mike Smith, a meteorologist and former senior vice president at Accuweather, has been pushing the idea since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.