Kristi Noem's Emergency Management Incompetence Was On Full Display In June In Sioux City Flood

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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. 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.

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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.

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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.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/04/noem-fema-south-dakota-floods/