The family of a man killed in the July 4 floods in Central Texas has sued the RV park where he and his wife were staying, alleging the campground’s owners knowingly placed its guests in an area that carried a high risk of flooding.
The lawsuit filed this week by the children of Jeff Ramsey, 61, of Lewisville, Texas, alleges their father’s death was caused by the negligence of the owners and operators of the HTR TX Hill Country RV park and campground, where at least 37 people died. Ramsey, whose body has not been found, is presumed to have died along with his wife, Tanya, after the Guadalupe River surged to record levels, sweeping away RVs, trailers and vehicles at the park in Ingram.
The legal action, which is among the first taken by relatives of the Texas flood victims, alleges that HTR TX Hill Country’s owners and managers did not instruct Ramsey and other guests to evacuate despite an imminent flood threat. The company also did not establish proper plans to respond to emergency floods, the lawsuit states.
Jeff Ramsey and Tanya Ramsey, 46, were awoken by heavy rain in the early morning of July 4 and were unable to leave their camper due to the rapidly rising water, the lawsuit states. Ramsey made a final call to his children to tell them he loved them before floodwaters surrounded their camper and swept it away, the lawsuit adds.
It also alleges that the Davis Cos., a Boston-based real estate firm that owns HTR, and a managing partner of HTR Resorts, Minh Tran, housed guests in a “known floodplain with a history of dangerous flooding.”
“This tragedy was both foreseeable and preventable,” attorneys at Webster Vicknair MacLeod, which is representing the Ramsey family, wrote in a news release. “By disregarding repeated emergency alerts and keeping guests in harm’s way, these companies … placed profit over people.”
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A Washington Post investigation found that HTR TX Hill Country was the site of the largest known cluster of deaths from the July 4 floods. It also found that Tran had dismissed concerns about flooding at a 2021 city council meeting, when HTR Investors — the company that had just purchased the park — was planning upgrades to its campgrounds that would have left RV sites in the Guadalupe’s high-risk floodway, known as “Flash Flood Alley.”
The company said the tiny homes it was adding to the site were portable, despite being built with roofed porches and stairs.
The Post also found that a dozen campgrounds in surrounding Kerr County had RV lots within the river’s floodplain. Seven of those, including HTR, sat at least partly within an even more dangerous floodway.
In August, the parents of another victim living at HTR filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the park and its general manager. Several more families of people killed at the park and one survivor joined that suit last month. HTR said again in statements to local news outlets that it rejected the “fundamental premise” of that lawsuit.
See here for more on that first lawsuit. I don’t have much to add here, this remains a terrible tragedy that really didn’t get adequate attention during the special sessions. It will be interesting to see, at the start of next summer, the news stories about the reopened camps and what measures they have or haven’t taken to mitigate risk and improve safety, and the items that the Lege didn’t address. The Hill Country is a beautiful place, but I don’t know that I’d want to sleep anywhere within a mile of the Guadalupe River, not without some real reassurances about alerts and preparedness.
On the subject of that first lawsuit, there are now more plaintiffs, as noted above.
The families of 12 Hill Country flood victims have been added to the lawsuit against a Hill Country campground
They were added to an amended court petition, originally filed by the family of Jada Floyd, seeking at least $1 million in monetary damages from the HTR TX Hill Country Resort.
The lawsuit alleges the Kerrville resort’s owners, developers, general manager and management companies were negligent in the preparation and evacuation related to flooding on July 4.
“Defendants were objectively aware of the extreme risk posed by the conditions which caused Plaintiffs’ injuries,” the petition said, “but did nothing to rectify them.”
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The defendants in the petition are listed as The Davis Companies Inc., investors of the HTR TX Hill Country; HTR Kerrville, which owns the land of the resort; Blue Water Development, believed to be the company that operates the resort; and Ilana Callahan, the general manager of the campground.
According to the suit, the defendants continued to operate the resort despite being aware of the risk of flooding and allegedly did not warn guests of this risk.
“Defendants lacked proper plans, protocol, and equipment to respond to the flooding,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants failed to implement sufficient infrastructure improvements and maintenance to establish and maintain a safe means of egress from the property to safety.”
The suit stated that there were 11 Flash Flood Warnings from officials between July 2 and July 4, which “were ignored” by the defendants.
“Surviving guests of the HTR TX Hill Country Resort campground report that it was someone honking a car horn that awoke them, and they were barely able to escape with their lives as the water rose from ankle deep to waist deep in minutes,” the lawsuit alleges.
Again, not that much to add here, I’m just keeping an eye on this. If these lawsuits actually go to trial, I expect they will be riveting, heartbreaking, and likely very revealing about just how much danger a lot of people over many years had no idea they were in.