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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So many parents dont investigate. They just assume someone is taking care of that stuff, even more so with rich people. [/quote]

I’ll admit I’m guilty of this.  DD spent a good chunk of her summers from ages 10-18 at a camp that I never saw much beyond the pickup/dropoff point, which looked lovely and very safe.  Last year, she finally took us on a tour of the entire camp and I was shocked at how isolated and remote some of the areas were.  I do think that they had excellent emergency plans in place, but I could also see how things could get dangerous really fast.  [/quote]

I mean, it was a camp for rich/upper middle class girls that has been around for generations. A lot of us go off of word of mouth recs from other parents rather than analyzing camp maps and flood risk data.

But yes the camp deserves to be sued. The wife of the camp owner who died had to be helicoptered out one year because of flood waters.  They certainly knew how dangerous the situation was.[/quote]

The husband knew enough to petition the state to have the doomed cabins removed from the flood plain so that he would be allowed to let girls sleep there. [/quote]

They petitioned FEMA, likely hoping to reduce their flood insurance costs. And FEMA agreed with them. That seems to refute the claim they knew this was a plausible risk.

I grew up in the upper midwest with floods, but those were far slower floods than flash floods like this incident. It is mind-boggling to me how quickly this flood progressed-- the river rose 26 feet in 45 minutes!

Yes, the area was known for flash flooding, but every aspect of this was a worst-case scenario. This was the highest recorded flood level. It rose extraordinarily fast, even for this area. It happened over a holiday weekend, with less support/warning from local emergency services. And it occurred overnight, likely delaying their understanding of how bad the flood was getting and impairing evacuations.

I do think it was negligent to have cabins with kids that close to the river. And I think the camp should have been more careful with monitoring the situation and calling for evacuations. But it also seems like this was both a truly exceptional event and a situation where emergency services should have more infrastructure in place in detect and warn of major floods as they occur.[/quote]

No. You are wrong. Stop making excuses for these people. 
For the last two summers I worked for a few weeks at an overnight summer camp in NC. Had in-depth conversations with the camp owner about what it means to responsible for hundreds of young people in your care. How you anticipate problems, even worst case scenarios. How you spend money to make sure your camp is as safe as possible, and you happily invite inspections so you can be accredited. 
She was so angry and disgusted with the Camp Mystic owners. As am I. They knew better, but were happy to cut corners and take those risks. [/quote]

You often don't know you're in a worst-case scenario until after it's over. That's the problem. You need to make decisions off incomplete information. How do you balance the moderate-impact risks that are direct and apparent (i.e., an evacuation at night through severe weather) against unprecedented (and thus, highly unlikely) risks with catastrophic impacts (i.e., a record-level flood that grew in record time)?

Suppose it had been like the 1987 flood, but they chose to evacuate through dangerous conditions, leading to (a much smaller number of) injuries or deaths?  People now would be saying they should have sheltered-in-place, on the basis that this kind of flood was highly unlikely.[/quote]

PP here - the risk I’m talking about, mostly, is the location of the cabins. Why build cabins in a flood plain? It’s my understanding that camp mystic owners lobbied to have that particular area un-designated as a part of a flood plain. So, why did they do that? Money? Cram more campers into that camp? 
Also, the camp where I worked had all kinds of storm/lightning/weather alert systems installed. Cost them a lot of money, but gotta keep kids safe! Doesn’t seem like the mystic folks felt the need to do that…[/quote]

I tend to agree that putting cabins in a floodway was a bad choice, but I disagree with your accusation regarding the reason. If I'm looking at the map correctly, they have lots of space. Cabins could have gone elsewhere. But locations near water (e.g., rivers, lakes, ocean) are generally considered desirable locations, whether you're talking about homes or camps.

The circumstances don’t look a money grab, or a willful disregard for life. If they really thought the risk was high, they probably wouldn't have gone to FEMA to get areas removed from the floodway. And the fact that some areas were removed (no, not all) probably reinforced their belief. This looks more like a case of risk habituation or recency bias leading to a lower perceived risk, combined with this genuinely being an exceptional circumstance.

Some of the earlier posts contain factual, but misleading, descriptions of the events. For example, an earlier poster referenced water entering a cabin well before it was inundated. That easily could have been understood to mean the water from the river was already that high. But that's not what happened. That was rainwater coming down the hill. These were rustic cabins without much of foundation. Water probably went in them with any heavy rain. That's arguably a bit gross, but isn't something that would warrant an immediate evacuation during a storm.

That doesn't make it ok. I do think the camp was negligent. But I think many of you are going overstating things. I don't think you can or should assume that ill intentions, like greed, played a major role. And I don't think some posters here understand how exceptional the speed and magnitude of the flood was in this case. It looks like it the camp didn't understand the the risks or the circumstances. Maybe they should have, but I also think the county failed with it's obligations here, too, by failing to have a adequate warning system.[/quote]

When camping, you really should avoid areas close to water. It helps to avoid contaminating the immediate watershed and water is always unpredictable. [/quote]

Yet, campgrounds and cabins are frequently close to water.[/quote]

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