Noem Lied – People Died

Guest article by Michael Cohen

As floodwaters rose and people screamed for help, warnings sat unsent; buried in red tape. Kristi Noem’s deadly requirements prove incompetence can kill just like a disaster.

On the night of July 4, while families across America fired off fireworks, the summer joy for 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic—children, some as young as eight—turned into horror. As the Guadalupe River surged nearly 30 feet in less than an hour, those girls didn’t just die in a flood; they died waiting for someone in power to push a button. To press “send” on a warning that just never came.

Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence, Hadley Hanna, Eloise Peck, Lila Bonner, Mary Grace Baker—these weren’t storm casualties. They were abandoned. And the one person ultimately responsible for that failure, the one with the most powerful emergency response agency in her hands, did nothing. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, failed to act—and children died because of it. Over 120 dead and more than 160 missing. Let that sink in for a minute.

This was not a freak event. This was not an unforeseeable act of God. It was a predictable emergency that met a predictable wall of inaction. Kerr County had an emergency alert system—CodeRED. It’s been in place for years, capable of sending text and voice alerts to phones and landlines. When water was already sweeping into homes and blocking roads, a firefighter pleaded over the radio for an alert to go out to residents in Hunt. The answer from dispatch: “Stand by; we have to get that approved with our supervisor.”

Nearly 90 minutes passed before that alert was finally issued.

Children at Camp Mystic and local residents were already gone by then.

Let’s be clear: the National Weather Service did its job. There were two dozen warnings issued. One of them screamed, in all caps, that this was a “PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION” and instructed residents to “SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW.” But unless you were glued to a radar map or happened to be one of the lucky few who received a generic phone alert, you heard nothing. No sirens. No texts. No calls.

And Kristi Noem? She stood before cameras and lied. She claimed there was no warning system in place. But there was. And it was functional. It just wasn’t used. Because no one with the authority—or the guts—stepped up to use it.

This is what happens when you put someone unqualified in charge of national disaster response. Noem is not a crisis manager. She is not a seasoned leader. She is a politician playing pretend with the lives of real people. FEMA is her jurisdiction. She is responsible for readiness, coordination, and action in the face of disaster. But instead of pressing forward and leading, she hid behind the same smokescreen of “reviewing protocols” and “focusing on recovery efforts.”

Noem didn’t fail because the job is hard. She failed because she didn’t do the job. Putting it plainly, she is unqualified.

Let’s talk about Camp Mystic, as this continues to make my blood boil. A century-old camp, loved by generations, obliterated in a matter of hours. Children slept in cabins built too close to the water—cabins that should’ve been evacuated the moment the river started rising. Instead, they woke up to chaos. Helicopters rescued some. Others died trying to reach higher ground or in their cabins. One mother was swept into a tree, held up by a piece of wood. Her son recorded the rising floodwaters with trembling hands. His sisters were airlifted out with cousins from nearby cabins.

One girl, clinging to her sister, vanished under the current.

And Kristi Noem still can’t admit what happened on her watch.

This wasn’t just a communication breakdown; it was a failure of command. A failure to heed clear warnings. A failure to empower those on the ground to act without delay. This was not the result of one bad night; it’s the outcome of a system that puts political loyalty above public safety. A system where the person in charge would rather lie than lead.

This tragedy should be a turning point. It must be, if not to at least honor those who perished.

We need an immediate federal investigation into FEMA’s regional coordination. We need a full audit of the emergency communication logs. We need real accountability from every official who allowed 90 critical minutes to pass while children and local residents drowned in the dark.

And we need Kristi Noem to step down.

This isn’t politics. This is life and death. This is about families who now have to bury their daughters and family members because a bureaucrat required her permission to do the right thing.

It didn’t have to end this way. Some of these people could have been saved. But we let them down. All of them.

We have the technology. We have the systems. What we don’t have—what we so desperately need—is the leadership.

Kristi Noem knew, or should have known.

Now the question is: Do we care enough to make sure this never happens again?

We are soon going to find out.

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