Camp Mystic on Thursday said it has withdrawn its application for an operating license, a decision that means it will not reopen to campers this summer.
The decision follows a grueling hearing earlier this week when Texas lawmakers pushed the family that runs the camp to consider if they were truly ready to reopen after 25 campers and two counselors died there during last year’s July 4 flood, along with the camp’s executive director Dick Eastland. Family members of the girls who died also spoke passionately to the camp directors in that hearing about their loss.
“No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy,” the camp said in its statement.
Camp Mystic had planned to welcome back more than 800 girls to a portion of its property that was away from the hardest-hit areas where people died. The camp said girls would be safe there and it wanted to continue its mission.
“We are grateful that no child will be placed in the Eastlands’ care this summer,” CiCi and Will Steward, whose daughter Cile’s body still has not been found, said in a written statement.
They added that the camp’s decision did not amount to accountability in their eyes.
“It was not out of respect for our grieving families. Nor because they wanted to do the next right thing,” the statement said. “We have pled with them to stop since September. It was a calculated exit from a license they were about to lose.”
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The Stewards filed a lawsuit against Camp Mystic and sought to keep the property shut so evidence could be preserved; a judge agreed that the portion of the camp where girls died would remain closed.
Lt. Gov Dan Patrick, meanwhile, repeatedly called on the Texas Department of State Health Services not to renew the camp’s license application. The department reviewed the camp’s new emergency plan and recently found it deficient in multiple areas, which the agency said was common across the state as camps worked to come into compliance with the new laws.
Camp Mystic still had time to fix those errors if it had decided to reopen. The agency and the Texas Rangers are also investigating complaints about the camp’s care of children, while the camp also faces additional lawsuits.
See here and here for the most recent updates. I didn’t follow the legislative hearing closely – read the story and follow the links for more on that – but from what I did see it didn’t sound like they went well for Camp Mystic. I have no connection to the camp and no stake in its status, but it’s kind of hard for me to imagine it operating again so soon after such a massive tragedy, especially when their culpability in what happened is still being contested. I don’t know what should happen longer term, but leaving it closed for this year seems like the right course. The Chron, KUT, and the Associated Press have more.
It took some Bevo-sized balls on behalf of the Mystic owners to propose opening a year after the tragedy, and the State of Texas threw them a bone/forced their hand by [now] identifying multiple safety issues…that they should have identified at any point over the last decade.