Texas health officials failed to follow state law when they licensed Camp Mystic without making sure it had an evacuation plan, parents of nine children and counselors who died in the July 4 flood allege in a new federal lawsuit.
Camp Mystic’s emergency instructions directed kids to stay in their cabins during floods, even though Texas rules require youth camps to have evacuation plans for disasters, the lawsuit states.
“Young campers and counselors were killed because the camp had no plan,” the lawsuit said. “The camp is responsible, but so are the state officials who helped create this inexcusable risk to life by directing and executing a policy of non-compliance with Texas law.”
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The families of nine Hill Country flooding victims filed the lawsuit in federal court on Monday, seeking damages and “all other relief that is equitable”. They are suing six DSHS officials, including Commissioner Jennifer Shuford, several others who oversee the youth camp program and the agency’s Camp Mystic inspector.
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A year before the flood, DSHS inspector Maricela Zamarripa reported the camp had a written disaster plan, the suit said. She had been at the property again just two days prior to last year’s flood. In her report filed two days after the flood, she again stated the camp had the necessary plan.
“The DSHS officials responsible for licensing youth camps deliberately looked the other way,” the families’ attorney, Paul Yetter, said in a written statement. “While Camp Mystic bears responsibility and is also being sued, state officials knew the camp’s emergency plan lacked a required evacuation component and still licensed the camp as safe.”
DSHS Deputy Commissioner for the Consumer Protection Division Timothy Stevenson testified to state lawmakers that the agency made sure emergency plans existed but did not ensure that they included plans to evacuate, the suit said — an approach the families argued violated both state law and the agency’s duty to protect their children in flash flood alley.
Two new state laws passed last year have further required camps to specify where to go in case of an evacuation, post evacuation routes in cabins and make sure those routes are illuminated at night. The agency meanwhile planned to raise its camp licensing fees.
See here for the most recent update, and here and here for more on the changes to the law and the fee hikes. A copy of the lawsuit is embedded in the story. Every affected family is a plaintiff in one of the five lawsuits filed against the camp. I feel confident the camp is going to at best be forced to settle these cases, but I’m less certain about the action against the state. The changes noted above could be construed as an admission that the previous standards were inadequate, and the plaintiffs here may have evidence to show that DSHS was negligent in its oversight, so don’t put too much stock in that just yet. I’m sure we’ll be following these lawsuits for quite some time. The Chron has more.