Camp Mystic

[Anonymous]

At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

That seems like the sort of thing that the state government should help fund.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

That seems like the sort of thing that the state government should help fund.

The Texas state government just chose to provide 57 billion dollars in property tax cuts. I guess they assume basic safety will be provided by property owners. Go to Texas at your own risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to chatgbt, you can get a reasonably priced system. 🔹 1. Basic Water Level Monitoring
Ideal for detecting rising or falling water levels (flood risk, seasonal changes).

DIY Ultrasonic or Pressure Sensor Kits: $100–$500
E.g., Arduino or Raspberry Pi based.
Requires tech know-how.
Commercial Water Level Sensors (e.g., Global Water, In-Situ): $500–$2,000
Includes data logging, weatherproofing, and calibration.
Often solar-powered with remote telemetry (cellular or satellite).
🔹 2. Flood Detection or Alert Systems
For warning of water encroachment onto property.

Simple Flood Sensors (Like Basement Alarms): $20–$200
Not designed for outdoor/river/lake use.
Outdoor Flood Monitoring Stations: $500–$2,500
Solar + cellular-based with alerts via SMS/email.
Can be installed near the bank or property perimeter.

Flood sensors were not the answer here. The water rose in minutes. From the time the rise began at that location till it was too late was not enough to calmly and safely evacuate 750 children.

But, there was a very clear flood warning 3 hours before the river began to rise in that location. The question is why they didn’t evacuate then. What went wrong that the news didn’t make it to the camp?

Anything is better than nothing. They should have at least moved the younger kids to higher ground. They should have had monitors, cabins on the higher grounds with multiple exits and a plan to get that many kids out in a hurry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

That seems like the sort of thing that the state government should help fund.

The Texas state government just chose to provide 57 billion dollars in property tax cuts. I guess they assume basic safety will be provided by property owners. Go to Texas at your own risk.

All of this is off topic. It was still the responsibility of the camp to ensure safety. They should have been more in tune with local authorities on a regular basis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to chatgbt, you can get a reasonably priced system. 🔹 1. Basic Water Level Monitoring
Ideal for detecting rising or falling water levels (flood risk, seasonal changes).

DIY Ultrasonic or Pressure Sensor Kits: $100–$500
E.g., Arduino or Raspberry Pi based.
Requires tech know-how.
Commercial Water Level Sensors (e.g., Global Water, In-Situ): $500–$2,000
Includes data logging, weatherproofing, and calibration.
Often solar-powered with remote telemetry (cellular or satellite).
🔹 2. Flood Detection or Alert Systems
For warning of water encroachment onto property.

Simple Flood Sensors (Like Basement Alarms): $20–$200
Not designed for outdoor/river/lake use.
Outdoor Flood Monitoring Stations: $500–$2,500
Solar + cellular-based with alerts via SMS/email.
Can be installed near the bank or property perimeter.

Flood sensors were not the answer here. The water rose in minutes. From the time the rise began at that location till it was too late was not enough to calmly and safely evacuate 750 children.

But, there was a very clear flood warning 3 hours before the river began to rise in that location. The question is why they didn’t evacuate then. What went wrong that the news didn’t make it to the camp?

Anything is better than nothing. They should have at least moved the younger kids to higher ground. They should have had monitors, cabins on the higher grounds with multiple exits and a plan to get that many kids out in a hurry.

They planned for the highest recorded flood height. This topped that significantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

That seems like the sort of thing that the state government should help fund.

The Texas state government just chose to provide 57 billion dollars in property tax cuts. I guess they assume basic safety will be provided by property owners. Go to Texas at your own risk.

All of this is off topic. It was still the responsibility of the camp to ensure safety. They should have been more in tune with local authorities on a regular basis.

That this is off-topic is your opinion, not a fact. I disagree.

I also disagree that the camp holds the only responsibility in this situation. There are several posts up thread explaining that this is not the first instance of this area of Texas having flash floods. It’s not even the first instance this decade to involve campers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am very sorry for the children (and adults) who died, but this was mismanaged by local authorities who didn’t want to spend the money to put in a system of sirens for this town despite being called “flood alley.” It’s not safe to live in towns with people who rather have their taxes low at the expense of basic safety measures.

The Wall Street Journal
By Scott Calvert, John West, Jim Carlton and Joe Barrett, The Wall Street Journal

https://www.tovima.com/wsj/officials-pushed-for-better-warning-system-for-years-before-deadly-floods/

Officials Pushed for Better Warning System for Years Before Deadly Floods
A sheriff in 2016 recalled pulling ‘kids out of trees’ in summer camps as leaders repeatedly discussed installing a siren system, but didn’t do so

former sheriff pushed Kerr County commissioners nearly a decade ago to adopt a more robust flood-warning system, telling government officials how he “spent hours in those helicopters pulling kids out of trees here (in) our summer camps,” according to meeting records.

Then-Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer was a proponent of outdoor sirens, having responded as a deputy to the 1987 floods that killed 10 teenagers at a camp in nearby Kendall County. He made the comments in 2016, after deadly floods ravaged a different part of Texas the year before.

“We were trying to think of, what can we do to make sure that never happens here?” Hierholzer, who served as Kerr County sheriff from 2000 to 2020, recalled in an interview Sunday with The Wall Street Journal. “And that’s why we were looking at everything that we could come up with, whether it be sirens, whether it be any other systems that we could.”

That suggestion, from him and others, was never adopted.

That this area was prone to flooding was a known issue. Most parents who sent their kids to Mystic and were Texans had some cognizance of the risk of sending their kids to a camp next to a river that had flooded. When my kid went to BoyScout camp there were den leaders who didn’t want to put tents within 1 km of a river prone to flooding. Less pretty to be sure to be inland, but a whole lot safer.

[Anonymous]

I fully admit to being an anxious mother and maybe the photos are misleading, but why on earth was the cabin so close to the water anyway?!? I wouldn't like that in general..what if someone sleep walks?

Or maybe it's hard to tell, and the cabin is up a steep slope from the river?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

That seems like the sort of thing that the state government should help fund.

The Texas state government just chose to provide 57 billion dollars in property tax cuts. I guess they assume basic safety will be provided by property owners. Go to Texas at your own risk.

All of this is off topic. It was still the responsibility of the camp to ensure safety. They should have been more in tune with local authorities on a regular basis.

That this is off-topic is your opinion, not a fact. I disagree.

I also disagree that the camp holds the only responsibility in this situation. There are several posts up thread explaining that this is not the first instance of this area of Texas having flash floods. It’s not even the first instance this decade to involve campers.

“Flash Flood Alley”



Now… why on earth do you imagine they’d give this place that nickname?


There must be SOME reason why…..



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Flood_Alley

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do not remotely compare losing a parent with losing a child. But I learned when my mom died of aggressive cancer at 60 that safety and control are completely an illusion. We were never safe and we never had control. It didn’t happen “for a reason” and I sure as hell hope it wasn’t “God’s Plan” to take her from us.

Death is never God's plan. He comforts the brokenhearted and will redeem through all things. But it is never His plan.

Please provide the bible verse for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Here's what Heather Cox Richardson, who IME checks her sources quite carefully, reports:

"Immediately after the catastrophe became apparent, Texas officials began to blame cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS)—part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—for causing inaccurate forecasts. The “Department of Government Efficiency” cut about 600 staffers from the NWS. After the cuts, the understaffed agency warned that “severe shortages” of meteorologists would hurt weather forecasting.

All five living former directors of the NWS warned in May that the cuts “[leave] the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit…just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes…. Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

But former NWS officials maintain the forecasts were as accurate as possible and noted the storm escalated abruptly. They told Christopher Flavelle of the New York Times that the problem appeared to be that NWS had lost the staffers who would typically communicate with local authorities to spread the word of dangerous conditions. Molly Taft at Wired confirmed that NWS published flash flood warnings but safety officials didn’t send out public warnings until hours later.

Meanwhile, Kerr County’s most senior elected official, Judge Rob Kelly, focused on local officials, telling Flavelle that the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive and “[t]axpayers won’t pay for it.”

Those NWS-published flash flood warnings are what would have been broadcast on a weather radio, if one had been present.

You lost my when you bring up Heather Cox Richardson. Talk about someone with an agenda to push.

This may all be correct, even partially, but the fact remains that the camp DID KNOW ABOUT THE DANGERS OF THE STORM far earlier than they sufficienty reacted to it.

If you can refute anything she says with references, by all means do so.

DP here. As someone who largely agrees with Heather Cox Richardson politically, I find her extremely off-putting. I just do not like her tone or her writing style at all.

If you can refute anything she says with references, by all means do so.

Can you read? I’m not refuting her. I just think she’s grating.

Your inability to tolerate her tone is not germane to the discussion.

She isn’t relevant to this at all. That’s the point.

It's funny how long it took for you to arrive at that position.

A dispassionate, fact-checked rendering of what happened--and what entities appear most likely to be responsible--is very relevant. If you think her claims about that are wrong, refute them. Whining on about her tone is sub-collegiate discourse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At the time first rejected, it was $1 million. Out of a $57 million county budget.

That seems like the sort of thing that the state government should help fund.

The Texas state government just chose to provide 57 billion dollars in property tax cuts. I guess they assume basic safety will be provided by property owners. Go to Texas at your own risk.

All of this is off topic. It was still the responsibility of the camp to ensure safety. They should have been more in tune with local authorities on a regular basis.

That this is off-topic is your opinion, not a fact. I disagree.

I also disagree that the camp holds the only responsibility in this situation. There are several posts up thread explaining that this is not the first instance of this area of Texas having flash floods. It’s not even the first instance this decade to involve campers.

Ultimately they are the ones responsible for the kids and counselors safety. Should the state have put in the warning system, yes. This is tragic and avoidable. As a parent it’s horrifying to think what those kids and counselors went through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Here's what Heather Cox Richardson, who IME checks her sources quite carefully, reports:

"Immediately after the catastrophe became apparent, Texas officials began to blame cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS)—part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—for causing inaccurate forecasts. The “Department of Government Efficiency” cut about 600 staffers from the NWS. After the cuts, the understaffed agency warned that “severe shortages” of meteorologists would hurt weather forecasting.

All five living former directors of the NWS warned in May that the cuts “[leave] the nation’s official weather forecasting entity at a significant deficit…just as we head into the busiest time for severe storm predictions like tornadoes and hurricanes…. Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”

But former NWS officials maintain the forecasts were as accurate as possible and noted the storm escalated abruptly. They told Christopher Flavelle of the New York Times that the problem appeared to be that NWS had lost the staffers who would typically communicate with local authorities to spread the word of dangerous conditions. Molly Taft at Wired confirmed that NWS published flash flood warnings but safety officials didn’t send out public warnings until hours later.

Meanwhile, Kerr County’s most senior elected official, Judge Rob Kelly, focused on local officials, telling Flavelle that the county did not have a warning system because such systems are expensive and “[t]axpayers won’t pay for it.”

Those NWS-published flash flood warnings are what would have been broadcast on a weather radio, if one had been present.

You lost my when you bring up Heather Cox Richardson. Talk about someone with an agenda to push.

This may all be correct, even partially, but the fact remains that the camp DID KNOW ABOUT THE DANGERS OF THE STORM far earlier than they sufficienty reacted to it.

If you can refute anything she says with references, by all means do so.

DP here. As someone who largely agrees with Heather Cox Richardson politically, I find her extremely off-putting. I just do not like her tone or her writing style at all.

If you can refute anything she says with references, by all means do so.

Can you read? I’m not refuting her. I just think she’s grating.

Your inability to tolerate her tone is not germane to the discussion.

She isn’t relevant to this at all. That’s the point.

It's funny how long it took for you to arrive at that position.

A dispassionate, fact-checked rendering of what happened--and what entities appear most likely to be responsible--is very relevant. If you think her claims about that are wrong, refute them. Whining on about her tone is sub-collegiate discourse.

+1. When people can’t argue the facts, or don’t like what the facts were, they complain about inappropriateness of “tone” or that the time is inappropriate to discuss something as “unimportant” as facts. And that’s why a bunch of kids are dead in the USA when they shouldn’t be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do not remotely compare losing a parent with losing a child. But I learned when my mom died of aggressive cancer at 60 that safety and control are completely an illusion. We were never safe and we never had control. It didn’t happen “for a reason” and I sure as hell hope it wasn’t “God’s Plan” to take her from us.

Death is never God's plan. He comforts the brokenhearted and will redeem through all things. But it is never His plan.

Please provide the bible verse for this.

Psalm 34:18
18 The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit

Revelations 21:4 (NIV) He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.Matthew 5:4

And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. 1 Thessalonians

The Lord cares deeply when his loved ones die.Psalms 116:15

Then Jesus wept.John 11:35

And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.1 Corinthians 15:26

Romans 8:18 (NLT) Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.