The McCook Lake neighborhood had never flooded in the nearly three decades that Kathy Roberts had lived there, and nobody warned her that it would on the night of June 23.
So Roberts, a 50-year-old manager at a local mental health center, was astonished at the scene that greeted her as she walked out her front door on Penrose Drive that Sunday night. A powerful hiss filled the air, she recalled, as if she had suddenly stepped under an invisible waterfall. Water was lapping up the street and pooling in her driveway. Within minutes, Roberts was knee-deep, struggling into the driver’s seat of her Jeep Wrangler and fleeing alongside her screaming neighbors.
End of carousel
Roberts’s home was nearly destroyed in the floodwaters that scoured the neighborhood overnight, washing away roads and opening craters into which entire houses collapsed. But she also lost something else: her faith in Kristi L. Noem, the governor for whom Roberts had twice voted and had believed, until that night, was doing a fine job running South Dakota.
That opinion would change dramatically in the coming weeks and months, as Roberts, along with others in North Sioux City, watched what they describe as a badly bungled response to the disaster by state officials.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Noem, a Republican and one of his most ardent supporters, to lead the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed, she would oversee not only immigration enforcement, but also an agency that has become increasingly important in a nation battered by frequent fires and floods: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
That alarms victims of one of the most serious disasters to affect Noem’s state during her nearly six years as governor. In North Sioux City, whose 3,000 residents live across the Big Sioux River from Iowa, many fault Noem for overseeing a response to the catastrophic June floods that they describe as disorganized, delayed and often simply nonexistent.
Although she urged people in a development several miles away to move to safety, Noem did not order or even suggest that residents of McCook Lake evacuate their homes, leaving people to scramble for their lives as the Big Sioux overflowed its banks and tore through their neighborhood.
After spending millions of taxpayer dollars to send South Dakota National Guard soldiers to the Mexico border, Noem did not deploy them to help prepare for the flood or cope with its aftermath. And she waited more than a month to ask President Joe Biden for a disaster declaration, leaving victims without access to federal assistance during a crucial period of recovery and rebuilding.
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In late November, five months after the flood, the neighborhood was still a disaster zone; some roads had been repaired, but the jagged remnants of destroyed houses lay untouched.
“I feel foolish for thinking that my government would take care of me in an emergency,” Roberts said. “Where are her priorities, and who is she looking out for? Because it’s definitely not me. It’s definitely not my neighborhood.”
A spokesman for Noem did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In past statements, the governor has defended the state’s handling of the floods, saying worse damage to North Sioux City was prevented by the construction of emergency levees and that the damage to homes at McCook Lake could not have been predicted. She has also said nobody requested a National Guard deployment, although local officials have repeatedly contradicted her.
In her July 26 letter to Biden requesting a federal disaster declaration, Noem highlighted various actions she said the state had taken to help flood victims, including sending a six-person team to help county emergency management officials, offering free tetanus shots to people mucking out their ravaged homes and deploying state Highway Patrol officers to assist with traffic control and the cordoning of dangerous areas.
Robert Perry, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, said in a written statement that the state had followed “the process for disaster response that allowed every possible South Dakota family to qualify” for federal assistance. Perry said local officials had requested state assistance with “security” needs that were better suited to local and state law enforcement than the National Guard.
For much of the period before and during the floods, Noem was out of state — first in D.C., where she attended a political conference and sat for an interview on a national television news show, then in Tennessee for a GOP gala.
Her actions contrasted with those of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), who oversaw a dramatically different response to the same flood just a few miles away. Reynolds immediately deployed the Iowa National Guard and requested a presidential disaster declaration before the floods had ended — a request that Biden approved the next day.
Dennis Daugaard, then the state’s Republican governor, deployed the National Guard to assist with that flood, and he did so again in 2014, when emergency officials feared that the Big Sioux might threaten homes. The 2014 flood reached only some outlying farms in the area around North Sioux City, but residents of McCook Lake still remember the reassurance they took from an emergency meeting at a nearby school and from the Guard troops who showed them how to fortify their homes with sandbags that were ultimately unnecessary.
This June, after nearly 20 inches of rain fell over several days and the Big Sioux began cresting its banks, some feared they could again be in danger. But on the afternoon of June 23, Noem sounded somber but reassuring notes at a news conference in North Sioux City.
ork.)
So Roberts, a 50-year-old manager at a local mental health center, was astonished at the scene that greeted her as she walked out her front door on Penrose Drive that Sunday night. A powerful hiss filled the air, she recalled, as if she had suddenly stepped under an invisible waterfall. Water was lapping up the street and pooling in her driveway. Within minutes, Roberts was knee-deep, struggling into the driver’s seat of her Jeep Wrangler and fleeing alongside her screaming neighbors.
End of carousel
Roberts’s home was nearly destroyed in the floodwaters that scoured the neighborhood overnight, washing away roads and opening craters into which entire houses collapsed. But she also lost something else: her faith in Kristi L. Noem, the governor for whom Roberts had twice voted and had believed, until that night, was doing a fine job running South Dakota.
That opinion would change dramatically in the coming weeks and months, as Roberts, along with others in North Sioux City, watched what they describe as a badly bungled response to the disaster by state officials.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Noem, a Republican and one of his most ardent supporters, to lead the Department of Homeland Security. If confirmed, she would oversee not only immigration enforcement, but also an agency that has become increasingly important in a nation battered by frequent fires and floods: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
That alarms victims of one of the most serious disasters to affect Noem’s state during her nearly six years as governor. In North Sioux City, whose 3,000 residents live across the Big Sioux River from Iowa, many fault Noem for overseeing a response to the catastrophic June floods that they describe as disorganized, delayed and often simply nonexistent.
Although she urged people in a development several miles away to move to safety, Noem did not order or even suggest that residents of McCook Lake evacuate their homes, leaving people to scramble for their lives as the Big Sioux overflowed its banks and tore through their neighborhood.
After spending millions of taxpayer dollars to send South Dakota National Guard soldiers to the Mexico border, Noem did not deploy them to help prepare for the flood or cope with its aftermath. And she waited more than a month to ask President Joe Biden for a disaster declaration, leaving victims without access to federal assistance during a crucial period of recovery and rebuilding.
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In late November, five months after the flood, the neighborhood was still a disaster zone; some roads had been repaired, but the jagged remnants of destroyed houses lay untouched.
“I feel foolish for thinking that my government would take care of me in an emergency,” Roberts said. “Where are her priorities, and who is she looking out for? Because it’s definitely not me. It’s definitely not my neighborhood.”
A spokesman for Noem did not respond to repeated requests for comment. In past statements, the governor has defended the state’s handling of the floods, saying worse damage to North Sioux City was prevented by the construction of emergency levees and that the damage to homes at McCook Lake could not have been predicted. She has also said nobody requested a National Guard deployment, although local officials have repeatedly contradicted her.
In her July 26 letter to Biden requesting a federal disaster declaration, Noem highlighted various actions she said the state had taken to help flood victims, including sending a six-person team to help county emergency management officials, offering free tetanus shots to people mucking out their ravaged homes and deploying state Highway Patrol officers to assist with traffic control and the cordoning of dangerous areas.
Robert Perry, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, said in a written statement that the state had followed “the process for disaster response that allowed every possible South Dakota family to qualify” for federal assistance. Perry said local officials had requested state assistance with “security” needs that were better suited to local and state law enforcement than the National Guard.
For much of the period before and during the floods, Noem was out of state — first in D.C., where she attended a political conference and sat for an interview on a national television news show, then in Tennessee for a GOP gala.
Her actions contrasted with those of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R), who oversaw a dramatically different response to the same flood just a few miles away. Reynolds immediately deployed the Iowa National Guard and requested a presidential disaster declaration before the floods had ended — a request that Biden approved the next day.
‘There was nothing’
North Sioux City sits at the extreme southeastern corner of South Dakota, just above the junction of the Big Sioux and Missouri rivers, overlooking Iowa to the east and Nebraska to the south. It is a region of corn fields and low hills whose last major flood had been in 2011, when the Missouri River swamped Dakota Dunes, several miles to the south of McCook Lake.Dennis Daugaard, then the state’s Republican governor, deployed the National Guard to assist with that flood, and he did so again in 2014, when emergency officials feared that the Big Sioux might threaten homes. The 2014 flood reached only some outlying farms in the area around North Sioux City, but residents of McCook Lake still remember the reassurance they took from an emergency meeting at a nearby school and from the Guard troops who showed them how to fortify their homes with sandbags that were ultimately unnecessary.
This June, after nearly 20 inches of rain fell over several days and the Big Sioux began cresting its banks, some feared they could again be in danger. But on the afternoon of June 23, Noem sounded somber but reassuring notes at a news conference in North Sioux City.
ork.)
