Camp Mystic reopening for summer 2026

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04/22/2026 13:35

Subject: Re:Camp Mystic reopening for summer 2026

quote

Anonymous

Found an interesting read on FB:

An Open Letter to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick
From Kerr County, Texas

Sir, one hundred and nineteen people died in Kerr County on the Guadalupe River on July 4, 2025. You have talked about twenty-seven of them. I’m writing about the other ninety-two.

You told our county judge he should have been here the night of the flood. That his absence was a failure of leadership. I agreed with you. Then you turned to the people who were here, the ones in the water in the dark pulling children out of cabins, and told them it was their fault. You cannot scold a man for being absent from the river and then condemn the people who were standing in it. You cannot hold absence as a sin and presence as a crime.

Let me tell you what that night looked like, since you were not here either. The volunteer fire chief who covers that stretch of the river could not reach his own station. The water trapped him on the highway. He watched a car with people inside float past him in the dark and could not get to them. Trained rescue swimmers said on the record that entering the water would have been suicidal. One team lost their truck to a wall of water within two minutes and hiked eight miles through the flood on foot. They rescued a thousand people in twenty hours.

At 4:22 a.m., a volunteer firefighter radioed dispatch asking if they could send a mass alert telling people to find higher ground. The dispatcher said, stand by, we have to get that approved with our supervisor. Some residents did not receive the alert until after ten that morning. Two dispatchers handling 435 calls. That was July 4 in Kerr County. And you are asking us to believe one family with a missing document could have prevented it.

You wrote the letter about twenty-seven. You called the hearing about twenty-seven. You asked the state to deny the license over twenty-seven. You stood at the podium and said those deaths could have been prevented.

Where is your letter about the other ninety-two? The twenty-seven have a story. They have a camp name. They have a hearing. They have a lieutenant governor who says their names. They have been claimed. The ninety-two have nothing. No narrative. No committee. No man at a podium saying their deaths could have been prevented. Their deaths are not dramatic enough for a hearing. They died in the most ordinary places you can die. In their beds. In their living rooms. In their cars on roads they drove every single day. They were not at a camp that can be blamed. They were home. They were just home. And nobody called.

That is the difference you have created. The twenty-seven died in a place that can be blamed. The ninety-two died in places that can only be grieved. And you have chosen blame over grief because blame has a target and grief requires you to admit the whole system was the failure. Blame has a podium. Grief asks you to sit down.

You have taken one hundred and nineteen deaths and turned them into twenty-seven. Turned twenty-seven into one family. Turned one family into a dead man who cannot answer you. That is not accountability. That is a funnel.

And now the investigative committee charged with examining the entire flood has been directed to look only at one camp and one three-hour window. Most of our dead do not fall within the scope. Say that to the families of the other ninety-two and tell me it sounds like justice.

The reason those girls should be alive is not because one family failed. It is because we all failed. The state that did not fund the sirens. The federal agency that redrew the flood maps. The county whose officials were unreachable. The system that inspected that camp two days before and checked the box. The decades of looking the other way between floods. That is not a story with a villain. That is a story about a fallen world.

I do not want you to stop investigating. I want you to investigate all one hundred and nineteen. Every system. Every agency. Every failure from Washington to Austin. Not from a podium. From your knees.

Sir, I believe in God. I believe you do too. I learned my theology from a man who washed feet for a living and did not much care for the chain of command. So I will say it plain. You can hold people accountable and still hold them sacred.

There is a line in John where Jesus stands outside the tomb of his friend and does the shortest and most important thing in scripture. He wept. He did not launch a committee. He did not ask who was to blame. He wept. Then he raised the dead. But he wept first. That was not a detour. That was the beginning.

Four months from now is July 4, 2026. One hundred and nineteen empty chairs. This community will either be destroyed by blame or rebuilt by truth.

Come to the river, Lieutenant Governor. Stand where ninety-two people were home, just home, when the water came and no one called. Stand where a man ran into the dark toward twenty-seven children and did not come back. Stand where the fire chief watched a car float past with people inside and could not do a thing. Feel all one hundred and nineteen.
Then weep. The rest will follow.

Randi Webber
Kerr County, Texas

Thank you to the Schneiders for this petition. Please sign below ❤️

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