Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:32     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:They also pretended to the families that girls were missing when they knew they had died, the filings allege.


Exactly. They found many campers dead in the car with the owner, but kept telling the parents they were “missing”. At least one found dead in a cabin. Parents and the rest of the world were told “missing” for days and days.
I was on pins and needles for days! I can’t imagine how they felt.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:27     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me is this: most; if not all, of the girls who were lost had mothers and other relatives who went there before. They knew the setup. Why would you alllow your child to live in a structure well within flooding range? It’s just so dumb.


I went to Camp Mystic and had I had a daughter, would have sent her. The camp had been in operation 99 years and nothing bad has ever happened. There was never any flooding while I was there and it’s safe to say these parents assumed their daughters would have the same experience they had. This tragedy was unimaginable. I do hold the camp owners responsible since they did have knowledge the cabins were in a flood plain and rather than moving the cabins uphill, they worked to have this area excluded. I also don’t think there were proper safety measures in place. I suspect the victims will prevail in their lawsuits and I hope this gives their families some peace.



This about sums it up, I think. A more specific detail I would add is that they waited so long to evacuate the girls (well over an hour from when they got the initial warning). That falls into "proper safety measures." I think they could have saved many, and perhaps all, lives, if they had gotten the warning and immediately shifted to evacuating the girls. They should have had walkie talkies or landlines in the cabins and they should have gotten out there with bullhorns and told all the girls to walk up the hill to the race center or whatever it was.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:22     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me is this: most; if not all, of the girls who were lost had mothers and other relatives who went there before. They knew the setup. Why would you alllow your child to live in a structure well within flooding range? It’s just so dumb.


I went to Camp Mystic and had I had a daughter, would have sent her. The camp had been in operation 99 years and nothing bad has ever happened. There was never any flooding while I was there and it’s safe to say these parents assumed their daughters would have the same experience they had. This tragedy was unimaginable. I do hold the camp owners responsible since they did have knowledge the cabins were in a flood plain and rather than moving the cabins uphill, they worked to have this area excluded. I also don’t think there were proper safety measures in place. I suspect the victims will prevail in their lawsuits and I hope this gives their families some peace.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:11     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me is this: most; if not all, of the girls who were lost had mothers and other relatives who went there before. They knew the setup. Why would you alllow your child to live in a structure well within flooding range? It’s just so dumb.


Have you never taken your family to a beach house, a lake house, a river house? There are entire neighborhoods and even cities in flood plains, all across the country.


If I did, I would be responsible for whatever happened to them.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:02     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Didn't read or click link. They plan to open camp again next summer?


It’s the same camp, but a different campus. They are not reopening the camp location that flooded. I think it’s still distasteful to reopen.


That's silly. Obviously don't rebuild in the lower floodplain, but it is otherwise a good location for a camp.


It might be a good location, but it's not a good leadership for a camp. These people should not be in the camp business.

I worked at a camp once that had a non-fatal drowning where a child ended up in the PICU. The drowning was the summer before I worked there. You would think that the camp would have learned from their mistake, and would have been the safest possible the following summer. But instead, perhaps because they were very invested in believing it wasn't their fault, the camp didn't make any changes. The next summer, when I saw the set up for water, I went to administration with concerns, and they dismissed them, and ordered me to continue with the exact same unsafe practices.

Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:02     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
They also pretended to the families that girls were missing when they knew they had died, the filings allege.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 12:01     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:So many parents dont investigate. They just assume someone is taking care of that stuff, even more so with rich people.


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.


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.


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.


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.


Yes, but if you read the filings it seems like they had no plans for emergencies, they had no walkie talkies or cell phones in case of a problem, and they told the girls not to evacuate even when they asked to. They didn’t check the cabins until very late. Their negligence made a bad situation fatal.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 11:58     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me is this: most; if not all, of the girls who were lost had mothers and other relatives who went there before. They knew the setup. Why would you alllow your child to live in a structure well within flooding range? It’s just so dumb.


I attended sleep away camp, not this one. I could not tell you, from memory, the exact set up of the camp and whether or not we were in a flood plain.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 11:56     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
One of the lawsuits makes it very plain that if they had only allowed the girls to walk the short distance to the rec hall even 20 mins earlier or hours earlier..they’d be alive.
Also mentioned they moved equipment to higher ground before evacuating a single camper.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 11:52     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:The thing that gets me is this: most; if not all, of the girls who were lost had mothers and other relatives who went there before. They knew the setup. Why would you alllow your child to live in a structure well within flooding range? It’s just so dumb.


Have you never taken your family to a beach house, a lake house, a river house? There are entire neighborhoods and even cities in flood plains, all across the country.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 11:40     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
The thing that gets me is this: most; if not all, of the girls who were lost had mothers and other relatives who went there before. They knew the setup. Why would you alllow your child to live in a structure well within flooding range? It’s just so dumb.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 11:26     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Didn't read or click link. They plan to open camp again next summer?


It’s the same camp, but a different campus. They are not reopening the camp location that flooded. I think it’s still distasteful to reopen.


That's silly. Obviously don't rebuild in the lower floodplain, but it is otherwise a good location for a camp.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 10:42     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:Didn't read or click link. They plan to open camp again next summer?


It’s the same camp, but a different campus. They are not reopening the camp location that flooded. I think it’s still distasteful to reopen.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 10:40     Subject: Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:So many parents dont investigate. They just assume someone is taking care of that stuff, even more so with rich people.


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.


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.


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.


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.
Anonymous
Post 11/15/2025 09:26     Subject: Re:Camp Mystic lawsuits filed
Anonymous wrote:Just curious....I noticed when it happened that the camp did not belong to the American Camp Association. Nor is it on the Newsweek list of America's 500 Best Summer Camps.

Do accreditations like these mean anything? I'm especially interested in ACA accreditation. Does the fact a camp belongs to the ACA any protection?


I think accreditation does show they have done certain things. I'm not sure what those things are, though.

I would look into staffing levels for a camp. My child's sleepaway camp had an enormous amount of staff. There were young counselors in the cabin, and one lead/older counselor, but also multiple adult counselors who didn't sleep in but were in charge of the cabin. There were so many adults around. Mystic had a different model, very light on experienced counselors.