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.

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.”

Neil Jacobs in 2019.Win McNamee / Getty Images fileLawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken this torch up before.