A brief overview of the situation, written on Sunday at noon.
The death toll rose to 68 as a result of the Fourth of July floods along the Guadalupe River, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said. That includes 28 children.
There were 10 Camp Mystic campers and one counselor still missing Sunday evening, officials said, with hundreds already rescued.
Reporters and photographers from the Houston Chronicle and other Hearst newsrooms remain in the Texas Hill Country as crews search for around 27 children missing from Camp Mystic and others lost in the floods. Here’s a recap of Saturday’s coverage.
Here’s that story about the missing Camp Mystic girls. Earlier coverage had spoken of as many as 27 missing. I didn’t see anything to indicate that some number of them had been found, alive or dead, so my assumption at this point is that perhaps the initial reporting had overestimated the number. This is obviously a fast moving story and there will be many revisions along the way. Also, if you do click on that story, you are going to see pictures of these young girls whose families don’t know where the are or what has happened to them, and it will shatter your heart into a million pieces. So click carefully.
On that note, The Barbed Wire has a long story about Camp Mystic and what it has meant to the many girls who spent a few summer weeks there.
Thirty-nine-year-old Jordan Macha spent more than ten summers at Camp Mystic, as both a camper and a counselor.
She can imagine in precise detail how the youngest girls, age 8, were tucked into their beds on Thursday in their cabins overlooking the Guadalupe River — hours before it swelled a reported 26 feet in just 45 minutes in a violent flash flood before dawn on July Fourth.
“I keep thinking of what those girls heard the night before: ‘Good night, Camp Mystic. We love you,’” she told The Barbed Wire. “Said in unison every night.”
The private Christian all-girls camp — nestled among cypress, live oak, and pecan trees in the Texas Hill Country on the banks of the Guadalupe — would’ve celebrated its centennial anniversary next April.
Instead, it is the scene of our latest national tragedy.
[…]
Mystic has been a popular rite of passage for many girls in Texas and across the country since its inception in 1926. About 750 girls were at the camp this week, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick reportedly said at a news conference on Friday. In an email to parents that morning, the camp said it had sustained “catastrophic level floods,” per The New York Times. Photos circulated online of little girls clinging to tree branches or riding in rescue helicopters.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” Elinor Lester, 13, a camper at Mystic, told The Associated Press, after she was evacuated with her cabinmates by helicopter. “It was really scary.”
Elinor was reportedly holding a small teddy bear and a book when she reunited with her family through sobs, her mother Elizabeth Lester told the news agency. “My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” she said.
Elinor’s cabin was on Senior Hill, where older girls are housed. The youngest campers, age 8, are located along the riverbanks and were the first to flood, she told reporters.
After news of the missing campers spread, former counselors, campers, and other community members shared their fear, their grief, and their memories of the beloved Texas Hill Country institution.
“Parents put their daughters on a waitlist when their daughters were born… hoping that they’d get to attend the same camp their moms did years prior,” said Sunday Crider, who worked at Camp Mystic in the summer of 1989, in a Facebook post. As Texas Monthly reported in 1975, Mystic has also long been a favorite of the Texas political aristocracy — with Lyndon Johnson and former governors Dan Moody, Price Daniel, and John Connally all sending their daughters (and sometimes granddaughters) to the Hunt-based camp.
Mystic prides itself on giving young girls “a wholesome Christian atmosphere in which they can develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem,” according to its website.
“I left a piece of my heart in those cabins,” the former camper, Jordan Macha, wrote on Facebook. “Today, that heart is breaking.”
“I’m holding onto the love and light that Mystic gave us, even in the darkest night,” she said.
Macha told The Barbed Wire she credits Mystic for much. “The most rewarding summers” of her life; fostering joy and forging lifelong friendships; for shaping the person she is today. “Each year, I was in the same cabin group,” Macha said. “We grew up together, creating an unshakable sisterhood that extended far beyond camp. That’s part of the ‘special sauce’ of Mystic.” She remembers dance parties on their trunks before bed, whispers and giggles during rest hour, competitions full of laughter and fierce friendship.
Macha’s heart “sank,” she said, when she caught news of the floods on Friday. Having lived through hurricanes in Houston and New Orleans, she was no stranger to flood devastation.
But this was different.
“I could picture every part of the camp and the cabins that were impacted,” she told The Barbed Wire. “I’ve been sitting with the fear those young girls and young women must have felt,” she continued, “and the bravery and courage they all showed.”
There are more pictures of missing campers in that story, too. They’re all over my Facebook timeline, too. We’re going to be living with this for a long time.
There are other camps in that area, and they have suffered losses, too.
Cynthie “Jane” Ragsdale grew up with a love for summer camps near the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.
In the 1960s, Ragsdale’s parents bought Camp Stewart, a summer camp for boys near Hunt, when she was a child. Ragsdale, who lived briefly in Denton then, spent her summers at Camp Mystic, a private summer Christian camp, where her aunt and cousin had also gone, and at Heart O’ the Hills, an all-girls summer camp, a special place where she would become co-owner and camp director.
“I loved every minute of camp from the first time I stepped foot in one,” Ragsdale recalled in a 2015 oral history interview with the Kerr County Historical Commission, archived on the Portal to Texas History.
That love would lead Ragsdale to become a camp counselor, assistant program director and program director — a summer job that Ragsdale said allowed her to focus on her studies in Spanish and journalism at Texas Woman’s University.
At Heart O’ the Hills near Hunt, Ragsdale served as program director from 1978 until 1987 and camp director from 1988 until her death on Friday.
Ragsdale, considered the “heart and soul” of the all-girls camp, was among the dozens of people so far confirmed dead from the catastrophic flooding that hit the Texas Hill Country on Friday, according to a July 4 post to the Heart O’ the Hills Official Fan Page on Facebook.
“There has been catastrophic flooding in the area overnight and we remain under flood watch until at least 5 PM today. Thankfully, camp was not in session, and most of those who were on camp at the time have been accounted for and are on high ground. However, we have received word that Jane Ragsdale did not make it. We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful.
“Rescue efforts are ongoing throughout the county as many people have been impacted by this devastation. We know all of you want to help, but roads are not open, and an official report of the camp destruction is not available. We will update as we have news to share. Please continue to pray for Kerr County and the surrounding areas as there have been multiple fatalities and still many missing.”
Ragsdale was 68.
The story returned to that 2015 oral history to quote Ragsdale saying that she loved what she did and never thought of it as work. Rest in peace, Jane Ragsdale.
Here’s another post from The Eyewall that expands on what they said before about cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service and the effect on the response to the flood.
There remains a lot to unpack still after yesterday. The reaction to our post covered a rather broad spectrum, and I just want to emphasize a couple points.
1.) We have been on record as saying the proposed budget cuts to NOAA would be disastrous. We’ve had people throwing that back at us and saying “Wait a minute…” The reality is that there are a handful of key ways the budget cuts will impact offices, alerts, and warnings. First, the primary current cuts have led to understaffing in many offices. Relative to other offices, the NWS office in San Antonio/Austin is fairly well off. For example, they currently have seven more full-time staff members than the neighboring Houston office.
They are missing the warning coordination meteorologist, who primarily focuses on building understanding of warnings on what we call “blue sky” days. That work gets done before tragedies occur. That position has only been vacant for a couple months, so it likely did not play a role here. But it will if it is not filled in the coming weeks.
But the office has most of their meteorologist positions filled, as well as most of their hydrologists. From the warning perspective in real time, this plus the timeliness of issued warnings is why I don’t believe staffing was an issue here.
2.) Weather balloon launch cuts probably had little to no impact on this specific forecast. Again, I want to emphasize that the launch of the evening balloon at Del Rio was crucial to understanding the potential severity of the event, and this emphasizes that fully funding and staffing NWS offices to be able to launch balloons is critically important. The takeaway here is that funding NOAA leads to better understanding of unfolding weather, forecast weather, and real-time decision-making.
3.) Weather model forecasts were imperfect ahead of time, but as the event closed in, they performed as designed and did better. Why is this? Because of NOAA-led research. The HRRR and HREF models have been instrumental in improving our understanding of localized (or mesoscale) forecasts like this. We have a long way to go to perfect those forecasts, but they more often than not do their job in guiding the horses (meteorologists) to water. How will we improve those guidance tools more? By fully funding NOAA research. How will we reduce false alarms during potential high impact weather? By fully funding NOAA research. It comes back to that in the end.
4.) We need to understand the limits of predictability in these scenarios. Models often tell us about the potential for a high-end event. But in Texas in particular the specific placement of a high-end event is extremely tough to pin down. A few miles makes a world of difference, and I think it’s evident that we need to build some pad into rainfall forecasts beyond what we’re currently doing. These are works that are accomplished by having NWS meteorologists working together with local emergency managers to help improve knowledge and refine trigger points for warnings. Again, this points back to fully funding and staffing NOAA and NWS offices to accomplish this critical work. The private sector cannot fill this gap at all.
For the families dealing with unimaginable tragedy right now, none of this matters. They deserve time, privacy, and space to grieve. But for those not directly impacted, it’s important for us to push this dialogue to try to play a small part in our broader understanding of the problems and realities. And it’s important to do it immediately because those on the outside have short memories. But I again want to share our condolences to all those affected in some way.
Here’s a timeline of events as put together by Texas Public Radio. There will be a lot to think about and try to learn from, and we’ll have to do that with a federal administration filled with liars and sociopaths, who will want to deflect and blame others as their first instinct. And while I hope what Matt Lanza is saying will add some context to what we know, there’s still more we’re learning.
But according to a new report in the New York Times, there were serious inadequacies in both preparation for and the emergency response to the natural disaster. In part, apparently because of staffing shortages at the National Weather Service (NWS) prompted by Trump’s and Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government. Housed within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Department of Commerce, the NWS provides forecasts, weather warnings, and climate data that are used to help local and state officials protect communities in the face of weather disasters. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) invaded NOAA earlier this year, and hundreds of forecasters were reportedly fired; another 1,000 reportedly took buyout offers.
According to the Times, the San Angelo office of the NWS was lacking a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and top meteorologist. The nearby San Antonio office also had vacancies for a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer, roles that are designed to work with local officials to plan for floods. The Times reports that the warning coordination meteorologist left after taking the early retirement offer that the Trump administration has used across agencies to try to shed staff, citing a person with knowledge of that worker’s departure. The Times also reports that while some of the open roles may predate the current administration, the current vacancy rates at both the San Antonio and San Angelo NWS offices are roughly double what they were in January, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents NWS employees.
John Sokich, former director of congressional affairs for NWS, told the Times the reduced staffing made it harder for the NWS to successfully coordinate with local officials.
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said the vacancies should be investigated, adding, “I don’t think it’s helpful to have missing key personnel from the [NWS] not in place to help prevent these tragedies.”
Several factors, however, contributed to the scale of devastation in Texas, including some that may not have been able to have been anticipated, much less controlled.
Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said at a news conference on Friday that the NWS underestimated the amount of rain expected to fall in its forecasts, but several meteorologists told Wired in a report published on Saturday that the meteorologists could not have predicted the severity of this storm, and that their forecasts were accurate at the time they issued them. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly also told reporters, “We deal with floods on a regular basis…we had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here.” And as my colleague Henry Carnell points out on Bluesky, other factors that were at play included national reductions in FEMA funding and, in some cases, lags in communication by local agencies to the public advising evacuation.
A spokesperson for NWS said in a statement provided to Mother Jones on Sunday that the agency is “heartbroken by the tragic loss of life in Kerr County,” adding that the agency’s local offices in Austin and San Antonio had conducted forecast briefings for emergency management personnel on Thursday, and issued flash floods warnings both Thursday night and Friday morning.
Still, the vacancies in the local Texas offices, coupled with the devastation of the floods, point to what experts have said is an urgent need for the Trump administration to bolster resources for emergency responses to natural disasters. Just this week, emergency officials from across the country told CNN that FEMA was ghosting them despite the arrival of hurricane season. Also this week, the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), a nonpartisan group of emergency management directors, sent Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a letter demanding she make congressionally-mandated emergency management grants available immediately, given that they should have been available in May. Spokespeople for DHS and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday afternoon.
Acting FEMA Director David Richardson reportedly told staff last month he was not aware that hurricane season had started, which the White House dismissed as a joke, and a May internal review of FEMA concluded that the agency was not ready for hurricane season despite the June 1 deadline. NOAA is also seeking to cut another 2,000 employees in its proposed budget for the next fiscal year.
Note that this is consistent with what Lanza wrote. I guess I’m just making a plea to listen to what the professional meteorologists are saying before you speak for them. And please consider finding a way to help if you can. Thanks.
Would the magas do as you suggested? Ever wonder why Texas is a deep red state? They play by different rules that the wimpy Democrats don’t think are kosher. Guess being fed to the lions makes great history.
The flooding risk on the Guadalupe River is a known problem. The geology and runoff patterns don’t change much and summer campers have been swept away before. In 1987, the eerie similarities.
This is local government failure. Either you have to restrict on-river overnight camping or set up a much better alarm system, so campers get a chance to get to higher ground.
As for the camp, why were the youngest girls in the most precarious cottages, ie, lowest elevation? With rising water, height and strength obviously matter. And where were the boys to the rescue and to sacrifice themselves saving the weaker ones? See YouTube on 1987 flood, in which teens perished.
The girls-only summer camp experience ought to be rethought. Boys would be learning survival (& rescue) skills that might then be a welcome resource in an emergency. Girls too ought to be taught what to do (and what not) in specified emergency conditions. There ought to evacuation plans and drills.
This post by Rick Wilson is worth reading:
https://therickwilson.substack.com/p/in-texas-the-water-rises-a-reckoning?r=1ne2d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
I understand that some people here might not care for Mr. Wilson, but something this spot on deserves to be acknowledged and read.