Transcript of Fired hurricane hunter speaks with CNN

It's calm in the eye, but then you have these towering thunderstorm clouds all around you. It's pretty visually striking.

That is what it looks like to fly into the eye of a hurricane. Andy Hazelton is a scientist at the National Weather Service, and he has done countless flight missions just like that into Hurricane Helene, Dorian, and Ian. But Andy and hundreds of other NOAH employees were recently fired as the Trump administration continues to make drastic cuts to the federal government. Until he was fired, he was busy making preparations for the upcoming hurricane season. Do you worry that we are about to go backwards when it comes to the science?

I do. I know that the colleagues that I still have there, they're going to work hard and do their best. But when you have a few people in places that were already understaffed, it just gets harder and harder to maintain that.

This part of the country is so affected by hurricanes. What does it mean for you that you can't do the work that you want to be doing?

I worry for the safety of the people here, my friends, my neighbors, our family, and across the board. Here in South Florida, like I said, we've been pretty lucky since Andrew. I just want to be able to keep collecting the data, keep improving our models so that the next time we do get something here, it's bad, but we're ready and we can protect ourselves and take action.