Catherine DeLeon knew her role. "Pet mom."
Stepping off a bus outside a sports and entertainment complex, DeLeon and her golden retriever Rhett filed alongside some 80 volunteers who were helping local emergency officials in the Metro New Orleans area practice a plan crafted after Hurricane Katrina.
When a storm hits and an evacuation order is issued, Jefferson Parish has a couple of days to move vulnerable people out of the path of a hurricane and to a shelter in northern Louisiana or to a surrounding state.
And yet, as climate change heats up Atlantic and Gulf waters, the large, swirling storms have grown stronger and intensified more quickly than in the past. All these factors present hurdles for coastal communities trying to be prepared.
With the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season starting June 1, DeLeon was among the parish residents and officials participating in an emergency rehearsal. This was the first time the parish opened the exercise up to the public.
The specific scenario at hand: How they would help people who, in the event of a mandatory evacuation, didn't have access to their own transportation.
Scenes from Monday's public-assisted evacuation exercise in Jefferson Parish. Volunteers line up (left) in the "large pets" section set up at the Vineyard Church of New Orleans in Kenner, Louisiana. Jefferson Parish worker Catherine DeLeon poses for a photo with her dog Rhett (right). Photos courtesy of Jefferson Parish
One volunteer said they had a disability. Another had their 7-month-old baby in a stroller. Another was pretending to be upset at the response and used Facebook Live to bash the parish. (In a prior exercise, a volunteer was assigned to say he had a bag of snakes in his hand, since they can be pets too.)
DeLeon, a digital communications manager for the parish's public information office, acted out what it would be like for an owner of a large dog.
In the throes of a mandatory evacuation, emotions are heightened and people may not want to leave their pets.
"If this was a real-life situation, [the owner] would panic," said DeLeon, who co-created the parish's hurricane dashboard.
"With the rapid intensification of storms, then our timeline for preparation just starts shrinking," said Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng, who signs the mandatory evacuation orders that affect up to 430,000 people. "That really poses a lot of challenges for us in that emergency operations world."
NOAA's outlook for the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season. Image courtesy of the agency
NOAA says there's a 60% chance of an "above-normal" Atlantic hurricane season this year, though it may not be as active as last year. Hurricanes Helene and Milton helped make 2024 the third-costliest season on record.
Releasing its outlook Thursday, the agency said it expects up to 19 named storms. Of those, six to 10 are forecast to become hurricanes. Three to five may strengthen to become major hurricanes, or storms rated Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
"Every storm is different," Lee Sheng said. "We try to prepare on all fronts."
Trump wants to shift disaster response to the states
Families watch Hurricane Francine from the entrance of their hotel on in Houma, a city on Louisiana's coast. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
In his bid to shrink the government, President Donald Trump has targeted federal agencies that help communities prepare for hurricanes and other disasters, as well as those that deal with the fallout.
Trump signed an executive order in March that directed state and local governments to "play a more active and significant role" in preparedness.
Yet different state lawmakers have aired concerns over how job cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could hamper the agency's ability to provide up-to-date, life-saving information like weather forecasts and severe storm warnings. State and local leaders rely on this vital information to make decisions, including whether an area should be evacuated.
When asked about these concerns at NOAA's news conference Thursday, acting administrator Laura Grimm said the agency's hurricane center is "fully staffed up and we're ready to go."
"We are making this a top priority for this administration," she added.
The effects of Trump's efforts to eliminate or reduce the Federal Emergency Management Agency are also a pressing concern. The president established a review council, after signing an order in January, that will recommend reforms for the nation's leading disaster relief arm.
Two Louisiana Democrats wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March, saying FEMA is a "lifeline" for the state by "providing not just immediate relief, but the critical support needed to rebuild and become more resilient."
A staff shakeup at FEMA has piled on more uncertainty. The acting head of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, was fired this month after testifying in a congressional hearing that he wouldn't dismantle the agency.
After spring storms left more than two dozen people dead across multiple states over the weekend, scrutiny of the federal response to disaster relief has deepened on both sides of the aisle.
Watch the segment in the player above.
The storm system that emerged Friday killed seven people in Missouri and caused widespread damage. St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer, a Democrat, said her city has been waiting for assistance from FEMA. She urged the state's partners at the federal level to "step up."
"The state of Missouri cannot shoulder this alone," she told MSNBC.
In a congressional hearing Tuesday, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley asked Noem to expedite the disaster declaration requests for Missouri, which is "desperate for the assistance."
Lee Sheng, a Republican, feels FEMA's regulations were often burdensome and added more obstacles for communities to rebuild after a devastating storm.
"What we hope that comes out of this is a more efficient process," Lee Sheng said, "but certainly the resources have to be there for communities that are just absolutely devastated and trying to put themselves back together again."
There are smaller parishes in the state that may not have the staffing or resources, she said.
Whether that support comes from the state level or the federal government, the parish president doesn't care who does the work. It just needs to get done.
How residents living in a 'bowl' prepare for hurricanes
Hurricane Katrina is one of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in recorded history to strike the United States. The destruction it wrought changed how emergency managers on all levels approach disaster preparedness and recovery. Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
New Orleans is shaped like a bowl, catching rain and making it susceptible to flooding — and also making it harder for first responders to get around.
Jefferson Parish has nearly 200 pumps to drain water that's not absorbed into the soil. With any hurricane or heavy, seasonal storm, that pumping system needs to stay ahead of, or at least keep pace with, the amount of rain that's dumped on the parish, Lee Sheng said.
Hurricane Francine overwhelmed the parish's pumping infrastructure last year. The heavy rains lingered so the floodwaters reached a "weird depth" that was too high for cars to go through, but not high enough for boats, Lee Sheng said. Some residents were stuck in place and ambulances couldn't easily navigate the darkened roads.
Part of Lee Sheng's message is that everybody — and not just communities accustomed to braving hurricanes — needs to be prepared.
"These hurricanes are coming at us faster and they're coming for a longer time of the year. They're producing more rain, higher winds. And they're going to places that may never have experienced that before," she said.
A fire hydrant in floodwater during Hurricane Francine in Dulac, a census-designated place in Terrebonne Parish. Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images
National Weather Service director Ken Graham shared a statistic he said ought to give people goosebumps.
"The strongest hurricanes are the ones that develop the fastest," he said at Thursday's news conference. "Every Category 5 storm that's ever hit this country was a tropical storm or less three days prior."
Hurricane Milton. Michael. Camille. All of these "big ones" became powerful storms in that short timeframe, giving emergency managers less time to act, he said.
The location of NOAA's news conference underscored that point. It was held in Gretna, Louisiana, one of many Gulf Coast communities hit by Katrina, itself a storm that rapidly intensified from a Category 3 to Category 5 in fewer than 12 hours.
A smaller NOAA is doing 'triage' right now
The Trump administration, through firings, resignations and retirement offers, has cut close to 600 employees at NOAA, according to the union that represents workers at the National Weather Service.
"It's put a strain on the system, it's put strain on all the workers," said Tom Fahy, legislative director for National Weather Service Employees Organization.
The shortfall has supercharged concerns, including from current and former employees, about the agency's abilities to carry out its mission.
The weather forecast office in Jackson, Kentucky, had a vacancy rate of 31 percent when last week's tornado outbreak killed at least 19 people in the state. Most of those deaths occurred in London, when a tornado rated as an EF-4 on the Fujita Scale with 170 mph winds tore through homes there.
It was "all-hands-on-deck" for the smaller team at the Jackson office which had recently cut overnight staff, Fahy said. Workers were called in to pull long overtime shifts to report on the tornadoes.
Alongside the Jackson office, six other NWS forecast offices — Goodland, Kansas, and two California ones located in Sacramento and Hanford, among them — reduced their overnight hours. In all, NOAA has 122 weather forecast offices.
NOAA is hoping to fill the gaps ahead of the hurricane season. In emails reviewed by PBS News, the agency is asking employees to transfer to other NWS offices to fill at least dozens of critical vacancies by the end of the month.
When the administration's cuts led to a halt of staffing shrotages and weather balloon launches, a key forecasting tool, Nebraska Rep. Mike Flood took his concerns to the White House. Later, the Republican lawmaker announced that two meteorologists on temporary assignment will support the Omaha-area NWS office.
"All we're doing is spreading risk around," Fahy said, likening to the agency's workarounds as "triage."
"This is like battlefield medicine right now," he said, "we're doing everything we can to stop the bleeding."
At Monday's exercise, back in Jefferson Parish, DeLeon heard someone pretend to throw up. A volunteer had opened a can of Campbell's soup and poured it on the ground.
Though not a severe weather battlefield at the moment, two EMS workers came over to check on the person, just as they would in a real emergency.