By Katie Copple
Published: Jun. 25, 2024 at 8:02 PM CDT
MCCOOK LAKE, SD (KTIV) - It’s the scene out of a horror film.
”There’s water, it’s flooded, it’s bad,” McCook Lake resident Kathy Roberts made it out with her cat and the clothes she was wearing. “I have no ID right now. I have nothing.”
“I heard screaming outside and looked outside and I had neighbors that had water rushing into their place and water was slowly rising in my driveway,” she described Sunday night’s flood, “within eight minutes, I was leaving my house and driving through water that was up over my step rails on my jeep.”
Some who made it out went back in to save others left behind. “I went back into the floodwaters grabbed him out of his house and then also grabbed a neighbor’s cat from her house also too,” said Nathaniel Cutsinger about his efforts to save others, “and we almost made out of flood wires but the vehicle stranded.”
Images from what is left of McCook Lake are unimaginable. Massive sink holes. Homes completely collapsed. Roads, wiped away.
Brady Dam was in Arizona when it happened. “Where’s a crater in front of my home. I was in Arizona for two days, we’re supposed to be there with my wife’s parents. And we’re literally living out of a suitcase. Like, I don’t have anything. I have a one-year-old son.”
These residents are more than just neighbors. They are family. Many reuniting for the first time ahead of our interview. One thing they all said is they want answers to what is next.
Since this story has been published, North Sioux City has provided details on how residents will gain access to their homes. That story can be viewed here.
“We know nothing,” Roberts said. “There’s nobody here to help us. Look around, there’s there’s nothing. There’s a bunch of neighbors that have lost their houses and what do we do? Where do we go?”
What’s left are residents looking for a way back in to see what is left of everything they own.
“We see the drone footage,” said Roberts. “It’s completely overwhelming. I mean, it’s hard to even look at my neighborhood and know where it was. I looked at my own property at one point was like, wait, is that my house because all of the stuff is gone. Like my driveway is gone. All my trees are gone.”
The one thing they know for certain is the McCook Lake Community will be together again.
“I just can’t wait to the day where all of our neighbors can come back under our street and be able to see each other and have the Fourth of July that we normally have with the awesome display and you know, the lakes back and everyone’s on their boats and stuff,” said Cutsinger. “So one day we’ll be there.”
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told KTIV Tuesday that teams are working on a plan to get residents to their homes to see what is salvageable, but the area is very dangerous.
“And we’re going to start really being serious about making sure that people stay out of these dangerous situations,” Gov Noem told KTIV. “We’ve got power lines down and sinkholes and drop offs of 30-40-50 feet, it’s dangerous and houses are gone. So we understand that people want their stuff. But we’ll come up with a schedule where people can get into their home for a moment, but they need to be escorted. And it needs to be done safely. So hopefully that announcement will be coming out soon.”
She said the state will be there to help those impacted by these flood waters and that South Dakotan’s need to stick together as they know how to do.
“We just need to understand that there’s a lot of needs right now and we’ve done this before. But, but this is hard, and it’s going to be something we’re going have to get through together, remember to love each other and to help your neighbors because that’s what makes South Dakota so special is that we, we tend to approach this in a way that we focus on helping each other instead of, you know, worrying so much about attacking each other when we’re tired”
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