With hurricane season officially underway, worries are mounting around whether President Trump’s cuts to the federal government have endangered the nation’s disaster response.

The concern is particularly pronounced on the Gulf Coast, where ominous storm systems are already beginning to form amid widespread staffing shortages at the area’s critical weather stations.

The anxiety found a new focus this week after David Richardson, the Trump-appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reportedly told employees that he wasn't aware the U.S. even had a hurricane season.

The Department of Homeland Security promptly dismissed those reported comments, which came at the eve of a forecasted above-average season, as a “joke.”

But the job cuts at federal agencies that will both warn the public of impending storms and move in after to help them recover are very real, and have left current and former disaster management officials sounding the alarm.

When disaster strikes, “will they come? Will they not come?” asked Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones. “If they do, at what level will they be responding?”

Her flood-prone Houston-area district — home to two of the country’s most dangerous dams — sits on the front lines of the region’s hurricane exposure.

The departures and firings at FEMA and the National Weather Service (NWS) have left the nation’s forecasting system “at the snapping point,” Tom Fahy, head of the NWS union, said on Monday.

The former head of the National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), meanwhile, warned of “degraded” forecasts that would mean communities face more uncertainty about impending dangers.

This week, a former FEMA chief compared the current state of the agency to what it looked like

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