Six months after Hurricane Helene, the western Landscape of North Carolina is still marked. A team of CDC workers was about to go to the door to check people when they lost their jobs.
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In and around Asheville, in North Carolina, there are still visible signs of devastation that remain Hurricane Helene floods Six months ago: rusty debris in the meters of residences damaged by ruined water.
But Helene, a federal worker in the event of a disaster who coincides the same name as the storm, is also worried about this community invisible Problems that tend to persist, months later – such as mold and financial and mental health.
“This six -month brand is a really critical period,” said Helene, who spoke at NPR under the cover of partial anonymity because it fears reprisals for having spoken to the media.
Until April 1, Helene worked at National Center for Environmental Health to centers for disease control and prevention. His team is parachutes after storms, forest fires, factory explosions or toxic spills to help the authorities and local officials to assess where to put emergency resources. Helene and her CDC colleagues have lost their jobs The layoffs led by Elon Musk approximately 10,000 employees of federal health agencies.
On April 1, Helene and approximately 55 other public health agents of the county and the government of the State, as well as a local university, had to go to door, examining 210 households on all the lasting challenges facing the residents of the Buncombe of Asheville.
They had prepared detailed questionnaires on food insecurity, dangerous drinking water and exposure to toxic chemicals. The mission of the Helene CDC team was to collect and process survey data and write a report – all within 48 hours – so that local officials can solve the most urgent problems of residents.
“The most difficult phone calls”
Hélène and other CDC colleagues were on the way, or already on site in North Carolina, when they all received the “strength reduction” emails placing them on administrative leave. They had to interrupt the mission and Helene had to disseminate the news to their partners at the level of the state and the county.
“It was really one of the most difficult phone calls I have ever had in my career,” said Helene.
The Buncombe County Suspended Suspended Survey is only an example of the many local and state efforts supported by federal health agencies taken in the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the government’s endowment and expenses.
Helene says she has a broken heart. “I have the impression of having dropped the community; I dropped the health department; I dropped the North Carolina itself,” she said. “I lost my job, but people have lost so much against these disasters and we are not there … discover what the community itself needed.”
Justification of federal costs
The CDC is part of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Services. Neither CDC nor HHS responded to requests for comments on the details of this story.
In an information sheet, HHS said that the CDC workforce was reduced by 2,400 people and that the objective is to rationalize divisions within the agency and get rid of layoffs.
On X, HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., expressed his sympathy for those who have lost their jobs. “But the reality is clear: what we do does not work. Despite the costs of 1.9 Billion of dollars in annual costs, the Americans become more sick each year,” said Kennedy written in a post. “We have to change CAP. HHS must be recalibrated to underline prevention, not just disease care.”
Overall, HHS workforce goes from around 82,000 people to 62,000 people, The agency saysIncluding the staff who have taken early retirement offers or DOGE “Fork on the road” offer. Overall, it is a 25% reduction in the workforce. HHS also reduces its contractual expenses by 35% at all levels.
“Human Human Interaction”
The impact of the Cups on the North Carolina project was immediate. But Helene – and other people involved – wonder how the reduction in staff will affect federal and local responses to any future disaster.
“I was really, really disappointed,” said Ellis MathesonDirector of Public Health of Buncombe County, who was at the reception of one of Hélène’s telephone calls on April 1.
“We had published this to the community; they knew we were going to come,” said Matheson. This too had to be defeated: “We had to inform the public that we would be not come. “”
Matheson says it was a missed opportunity to meet people’s needs. “There would have been a human interaction to human, and people could ask questions, say what resources they need,” she said. “And right there, we could connect them with these resources.”
Matheson says that the county’s health service possibly plans to come together, but without the help of the CDC, his team could not carry out the project as planned. “”This expertise to be able to help us in the analysis and to develop a report was really vital; This expertise in the matter, we really count on this, “she says.
Devastating storms have brought Tornado damage and floods in a large area In the South and Midwest, the day after the CDC cut off his team that responds to such disasters.
States are counting on CDC expertise
Expertise in the federal level exists precisely to the CDC because it is simply not possible or possible for each state and locality to have its own experts in disaster, says Dr Zack MooreAn epidemiologist with North Carolina Department of Health and Social Services. “This is the reason why the CDC exists.”
Moore says that the Buncombe County survey is just an example of the ways that states regularly rely on the CDC to protect residents from diseases and disasters. “Beyond the hurricanes, they make problems with radiation preparation, toxicology problems, the surveillance of diseases in the shelters of the Red Cross after a disaster-everything, from illness epidemics to mental health needs,” he said.
As in all other states, says Moore, the North Carolina Health Service also depends on the financing of the CDC – Something that has also been reduced in the middle of Trump’s Cups to federal agencies. Moore, who oversees the departments of infectious diseases, vaccination and environmental disasters, says that 90% of her budget comes from the CDC. However, he says that many people do not know how strongly the states are on federal funding for essential services like his: “We get very little funding from the state.”
There are a lot of disturbing public health problems at the moment, Moore is falling apart – “Oh, God, hurricanes, measles, flu” – but one of the new most pressing concerns that are all over they are the hollow of the CDC environmental health division.
“To dissolve them instantly will leave a big gap,” added Moore.