U.S. Congresswoman Cindy Axne

New legislation has been put forward to improve communication efforts during severe weather events and multiple Iowa representatives have led the way.

U.S. Congresswoman Cindy Axne says she helped introduce the “National Weather Service Communication Improvement Act,” that would modernize their outdated communication network which is led by Representatives Randy Feenstra and supported by Representatives Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Axne explains during the weather events on March 5th there was a technology glitch that kept information from Iowans for six minutes. 

“So there was a delay of over six minutes out of the National Weather Service getting to our emergency management folks up here in the affected areas of the tornado. And that six minutes is so important to our Iowans’ lives.”

Axne proposes that the National Weather Service needs to change their chat messaging service to a more reliable cloud base server. She expects to get down to the bottom of every issue that occurred during the timeframe of the glitch.