Camp Mystic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

At the camp I attended there absolutely was a counselor tasked with being up all night for medical emergencies, weather, comms, etc. I’m floored there wasn’t someone looking out.

PP again. A counselor?? That's not good enough. If you have 850 CHILDREN as your responsibility, again sleeping out in the middle of the woods away from serious medical help, etc., for weeks at a time, there damn well should be a full staff of adult security guards.

The more I think about it, this is 100% on the camp. I hope parents are lining up lawsuits.

There were failures at many levels, federal, state, county, and local. A perfect storm.

Not really, there was a break in the federal level which never kicked off what would happen down the line. This fully is the fault of DOGE cuts and those who voted for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

Having someone watching a forecast all night is not done and would not make sense. It would have been reasonable for the cabins closest to the river (and the camp's leadership) to have had NOAA weather radios that emit a warning siren when warranted. These cost about $40 apiece.

Not make sense?? And pray tell why not?

Because forecasts are predictions about the future (often the distant future, which is knowable with less certainty), and NOAA weather radio warning sirens are actionable information about events that are actually about to take place.

According to what I have read, NOAA correctly identified the flood potential here. However, the supervisor who would normally have been responsible for calling up local officials to say: "Hey, this could be a big one, get ready" had been DOGEd, so that did not occur.

These cabins are located in a place where there is no cell phone service, so cell phone-based alerts like the ones I am continually getting from MoCo about various weather events would not have worked.

The locals voted against an audible siren system because of cost.

So the NOAA weather radio would be the way to go. I am buying one today.

We're not talking about your little house and your family of 3.5.

We're talking about business people who ran a camp that brought HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN to its location for WEEKS AT A TIME during the summer months. This is a whole other level of obligation and responsibility.

Of COURSE you have multiple people, on staff, every single night of the summer, awake and taking care of problems during the night. Don't give me the DOGE BS - the warnings were there, grew more dire throughout the night, and were ignored.

Like I said, I hope the parents are lining up lawsuits.

It sounds like you have an agenda here other than discussing how this could be expeditiously prevented for other kids at camps like this one in the future. I'm going to leave all of that alone.

My kid goes to a summer camp located next to a river, also for weeks at a time. There are adults awake at night, but their role is not monitoring weather forecasts; it is taking care of kids who need assistance.

They sent me an email this morning describing their plans for weather emergencies in light of this disaster, and the NOAA weather radio was one element, because the cellular service is known to stink where they're located.

If your kids go to sleepaway camp, you should consider asking them for their plans as well.

[Anonymous]

I want to say thank you to the person who started this thread. It's Monday afternoon and this tragedy is on my mind and really was a lot when I was falling asleep last night. I came here to DCUM to feel less alone. I can say these things to my husband, my parents and my friends but there is a different, surprising but real, comfort to this shared sense of sadness with the larger world and hearing people's thoughts.

Even though it always gets into some judgment and name calling and such, I still found it helpful to read some people who are saying what I was thinking--about the vulnerability of being a parent, being a human etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

Having someone watching a forecast all night is not done and would not make sense. It would have been reasonable for the cabins closest to the river (and the camp's leadership) to have had NOAA weather radios that emit a warning siren when warranted. These cost about $40 apiece.

Those bunks should never have been placed there. That is one issue. The government knew the storm was coming and didn't warn people to take precautions. This and other camps have had problems dating back many years. Common sense would be a night security guard. Especially when kids sneak out of cabins and near water. They also should have had 2-3 exits to those cabins instead of one... So many ways that this could have been prevented and was with other camps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mystic did have a night watch and he raised the alarm at 2:00 am according to him. They started moving the lowest lying campers up to the Rec hall at that time. They were still moving kids when the flash flood came at about 4:00am. The two cabins where the kids were swept away were 25 ft up from the edge of the river, near the rec hall. The river has never risen that high before. The water rose more than that in 40 minutes and reached the Rec hall but it thankfully didn’t collapse. By the time they tried to get to other cabins near the rec hall the water was going up incredibly fast and one of the cabin walls collapsed. That was the cabin were all the girls were swept away. They were in the middle of getting the girls from the cabin beside it and rescued most of them but the camp director was swept away with a few girls. There was an interview with the night watchman.

If this account is true (I have no idea) it should not take 2 hours to move children to safety. TWO HOURS!!

I think they thought they had moved them to safety or had moved those who weren’t safe. They didn’t expect the massive storm surge that rose 26’ in 45 minutes. They expected the River to flood as it had flooded before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

Having someone watching a forecast all night is not done and would not make sense. It would have been reasonable for the cabins closest to the river (and the camp's leadership) to have had NOAA weather radios that emit a warning siren when warranted. These cost about $40 apiece.

Those bunks should never have been placed there. That is one issue. The government knew the storm was coming and didn't warn people to take precautions. This and other camps have had problems dating back many years. Common sense would be a night security guard. Especially when kids sneak out of cabins and near water. They also should have had 2-3 exits to those cabins instead of one... So many ways that this could have been prevented and was with other camps.

You're going to have to read the thread and catch up. There was a night security guard, and the government did issue warnings; they were not received in the camp location because of a series of bad decisions at multiple levels.

I guess you can go back and argue with the people who put the bunks there in the 1930s about bunk placement, but my guess is that it would have been a hard sell to discuss the impact of climate change on modern-day Texan evangelicals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

Having someone watching a forecast all night is not done and would not make sense. It would have been reasonable for the cabins closest to the river (and the camp's leadership) to have had NOAA weather radios that emit a warning siren when warranted. These cost about $40 apiece.

Not make sense?? And pray tell why not?

Because forecasts are predictions about the future (often the distant future, which is knowable with less certainty), and NOAA weather radio warning sirens are actionable information about events that are actually about to take place.

According to what I have read, NOAA correctly identified the flood potential here. However, the supervisor who would normally have been responsible for calling up local officials to say: "Hey, this could be a big one, get ready" had been DOGEd, so that did not occur.

These cabins are located in a place where there is no cell phone service, so cell phone-based alerts like the ones I am continually getting from MoCo about various weather events would not have worked.

The locals voted against an audible siren system because of cost.

So the NOAA weather radio would be the way to go. I am buying one today.

We're not talking about your little house and your family of 3.5.

We're talking about business people who ran a camp that brought HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN to its location for WEEKS AT A TIME during the summer months. This is a whole other level of obligation and responsibility.

Of COURSE you have multiple people, on staff, every single night of the summer, awake and taking care of problems during the night. Don't give me the DOGE BS - the warnings were there, grew more dire throughout the night, and were ignored.

Like I said, I hope the parents are lining up lawsuits.

NP. Don't some camps have limited cell service? I feel like some places advertise being so isolated as a positive thing for the campers.

Yes. They do. And that is even more reason to have a full security staff on alert, 24/7, monitoring short wave radios and other means of communication to keep the 850 children in the care of the camp safe.

[Anonymous]

As a camp mom this hits close to home. I did not grow up going to overnight camp, but my husband did and similar to Camp Mystic, generations of kids attend the Jewish summer camp where my kids go. You send them off with the hope and anticipation it will be a transformative experience where they can be independent from you, immerse themselves in camp culture, cultivate friendships with kids outside their home bubble, and just be free in a way they can’t in a school setting. And then as a parent, you live vicariously through them through photos and letters (if you’re lucky). The bunk photo of the girls from Bubble Inn breaks my heart because I know as a parent how exciting it is to get that bunk photo to see who your kids will be living with the next several weeks and the excitement they have looking at it when they get home and telling your stories about the kids in the photo. The memories these girls would have made together would have been precious and now all that’s left is that photo frozen in time if what could have been of their summer. The loss is immense and the horror of it is incomprehensible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have learned so much about camp culture this week from the news. Anyone care to explain the use of Native American tribe names and headdresses by these white, Christian kids? Tradition?

I have no idea why they do it but we had the same thing at the camp I attend 30 years ago (non-religious). We would earn feathers for things we did at camp and we would all strive to earn an eagle or peacock feather we'd proudly wear in headbands on our heads to campfire. I cringe at those photos now.

And we wonder why everyone struggles now. Our generation wants to tear down traditions. But then replace them with nothing.

This is a Christian Camp, plenty of things to replace it with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

At the camp I attended there absolutely was a counselor tasked with being up all night for medical emergencies, weather, comms, etc. I’m floored there wasn’t someone looking out.

PP again. A counselor?? That's not good enough. If you have 850 CHILDREN as your responsibility, again sleeping out in the middle of the woods away from serious medical help, etc., for weeks at a time, there damn well should be a full staff of adult security guards.

The more I think about it, this is 100% on the camp. I hope parents are lining up lawsuits.

There were failures at many levels, federal, state, county, and local. A perfect storm.

Not really, there was a break in the federal level which never kicked off what would happen down the line. This fully is the fault of DOGE cuts and those who voted for it.

Stop spreading your fake info Democrat BS, authorities stated that the wretched men were fully staffed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

PP here. Are you kidding me?

Suppose you're the owner/ operator of a camp that hosts 850 children on site at one time. Don't you think you would spring for a couple of overnight security people at $25 an hour to make sure everything is OK overnight, while all of the children and staff are sleeping??? Or are you OK to just go to sleep in the middle of the woods, away from everything, and hope nothing happens for 6-8 hours?

There was a night security guard and he helped evacuate and rescue the girls.

He didn't start the evacuation the day before, which in hindsight is when the evacuation should have started.

"A" night security guard, at a camp for hundreds of kids? You've got to be kidding. What were these owners thinking??

The evacuation call was most likely not the security guards to make. That is the responsiblity of the camp owner/ director. I can understand the call not being made the day before. But the warnings grew increasingly strong throughout the night. They should have been up at midnight, 1:00 am, 2:00 am working on this.

I don't know if there was one or more, although I think you might be overestimating what a camp for 100s of kids would require. The evacuation call was not his to make, at least not the day before.

It's not clear if the camp had good cell reception or how aware they were of the increasing warnings.

They should always have had an evacuation plan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

Having someone watching a forecast all night is not done and would not make sense. It would have been reasonable for the cabins closest to the river (and the camp's leadership) to have had NOAA weather radios that emit a warning siren when warranted. These cost about $40 apiece.

Not make sense?? And pray tell why not?

Because forecasts are predictions about the future (often the distant future, which is knowable with less certainty), and NOAA weather radio warning sirens are actionable information about events that are actually about to take place.

According to what I have read, NOAA correctly identified the flood potential here. However, the supervisor who would normally have been responsible for calling up local officials to say: "Hey, this could be a big one, get ready" had been DOGEd, so that did not occur.

These cabins are located in a place where there is no cell phone service, so cell phone-based alerts like the ones I am continually getting from MoCo about various weather events would not have worked.

The locals voted against an audible siren system because of cost.

So the NOAA weather radio would be the way to go. I am buying one today.

We're not talking about your little house and your family of 3.5.

We're talking about business people who ran a camp that brought HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN to its location for WEEKS AT A TIME during the summer months. This is a whole other level of obligation and responsibility.

Of COURSE you have multiple people, on staff, every single night of the summer, awake and taking care of problems during the night. Don't give me the DOGE BS - the warnings were there, grew more dire throughout the night, and were ignored.

Like I said, I hope the parents are lining up lawsuits.

It sounds like you have an agenda here other than discussing how this could be expeditiously prevented for other kids at camps like this one in the future. I'm going to leave all of that alone.

My kid goes to a summer camp located next to a river, also for weeks at a time. There are adults awake at night, but their role is not monitoring weather forecasts; it is taking care of kids who need assistance.

They sent me an email this morning describing their plans for weather emergencies in light of this disaster, and the NOAA weather radio was one element, because the cellular service is known to stink where they're located.

If your kids go to sleepaway camp, you should consider asking them for their plans as well.

I assure you, I have no "agenda." I am simply mourning this loss of life and I suppose I have moved to the "anger" stage of grief. Yes, a series of failures all the way around at Camp Mystic. BUT that should not stop us from calling out obvious security failures and having parents who send little children of this age away to camp for weeks at a time ask a few more questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

At the camp I attended there absolutely was a counselor tasked with being up all night for medical emergencies, weather, comms, etc. I’m floored there wasn’t someone looking out.

PP again. A counselor?? That's not good enough. If you have 850 CHILDREN as your responsibility, again sleeping out in the middle of the woods away from serious medical help, etc., for weeks at a time, there damn well should be a full staff of adult security guards.

The more I think about it, this is 100% on the camp. I hope parents are lining up lawsuits.

There were failures at many levels, federal, state, county, and local. A perfect storm.

Not really, there was a break in the federal level which never kicked off what would happen down the line. This fully is the fault of DOGE cuts and those who voted for it.

Stop spreading your fake info Democrat BS, authorities stated that the wretched men were fully staffed.

Doge was a small part in it but there were many failures and now people lost their lives, some of it over money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm from the south and understand camp culture and its importance to many families. I have multiple friends with some association to Camp Mystic as former campers, counselors, etc. It's not my thing, but I get it.

Here's what I don't understand.

This camp - and many camps in that area - have been there for 100 years. This is a big part of the tradition; campers literally stay in the same cabins that their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. did. They are not going to up and move the location of the camp. But, given the nature of the river and history of flooding there, why are they not better regulated? Are they inspected for safety, beyond the dining room kitchens? How do they get insurance being situated so close to the river as they are?

It seems to me that any of these privately held camps that host thousands of kids across the course of the summer would pay more attention to safety factors. I'm sure they do some sort of weather drills and training, etc. with their young staffs. But this is the kind of thing that needs to be reviewed and thought through on an annual basis. Why was no one awake that night, all night, watching the weather forecast? The warnings were there and they grew increasingly dire throughout the night. That should be standard operating procedure for any facility like this.

Is it common to have someone literally awake watching the weather forecast at any camp? I'm sure that many of y'all will become experts on the Camp Mystic Safety Manual as soon as it's available.

PP here. Are you kidding me?

Suppose you're the owner/ operator of a camp that hosts 850 children on site at one time. Don't you think you would spring for a couple of overnight security people at $25 an hour to make sure everything is OK overnight, while all of the children and staff are sleeping??? Or are you OK to just go to sleep in the middle of the woods, away from everything, and hope nothing happens for 6-8 hours?

There was a night security guard and he helped evacuate and rescue the girls.

He didn't start the evacuation the day before, which in hindsight is when the evacuation should have started.

"A" night security guard, at a camp for hundreds of kids? You've got to be kidding. What were these owners thinking??

The evacuation call was most likely not the security guards to make. That is the responsiblity of the camp owner/ director. I can understand the call not being made the day before. But the warnings grew increasingly strong throughout the night. They should have been up at midnight, 1:00 am, 2:00 am working on this.

I don't know if there was one or more, although I think you might be overestimating what a camp for 100s of kids would require. The evacuation call was not his to make, at least not the day before.

It's not clear if the camp had good cell reception or how aware they were of the increasing warnings.

They should always have had an evacuation plan.

+1. Cannot believe their insurance, or their law firm, did not require it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mystic did have a night watch and he raised the alarm at 2:00 am according to him. They started moving the lowest lying campers up to the Rec hall at that time. They were still moving kids when the flash flood came at about 4:00am. The two cabins where the kids were swept away were 25 ft up from the edge of the river, near the rec hall. The river has never risen that high before. The water rose more than that in 40 minutes and reached the Rec hall but it thankfully didn’t collapse. By the time they tried to get to other cabins near the rec hall the water was going up incredibly fast and one of the cabin walls collapsed. That was the cabin were all the girls were swept away. They were in the middle of getting the girls from the cabin beside it and rescued most of them but the camp director was swept away with a few girls. There was an interview with the night watchman.

If this account is true (I have no idea) it should not take 2 hours to move children to safety. TWO HOURS!!

I think they thought they had moved them to safety or had moved those who weren’t safe. They didn’t expect the massive storm surge that rose 26’ in 45 minutes. They expected the River to flood as it had flooded before.

Yes, I read the rec hall (?) where the girls were moved to was above the 100 year flood plain, however the water engulfed those buildings anyway.