Camp Mystic did not have state-required written emergency plans or adequate evacuation measures that could have prevented the deaths of 25 campers and two counselors in last year’s July 4 flood, state-appointed investigators told the state lawmakers in their final report released on Thursday.
Casey Garrett and Michael Massengale, hired by the Texas Legislature to conduct a probe of the flood response, said cascading failures led to the tragedy, from communication lapses between state and local authorities to lackluster instructions to counselors about how to safely evacuate in the event of a flood beyond haphazard planning by the camp’s director, Richard Eastland, who also died in the flood while trying to rescue campers.
“And when disaster struck, and it did strike on July 4 of last year, it may as well have been no plan at all,” Massengale said.
In a 115-page report, the findings pieced together more accounts of the events that played out at the century-old camp, including new interviews with surviving campers and state and local officials.
A joint committee of state representatives and senators said the Legislature addressed all but one of the deficiencies outlined in the investigators’ report by passing a series of laws last year. They promised to address the remaining problem — the inability of camp counselors to reach the camp’s owners during the flood — in the next legislative session that begins in January.
“We do not recall being aware of this deficiency at the time we developed and passed (the laws), and we are thankful this process revealed it to us,” a letter attached to the report said.
The investigators’ report concluded:
- Camp Mystic did not have written emergency plans that complied with the state’s requirements. Investigators said camp leadership didn’t have state-approved emergency plans posted in each cabin for counselors and campers, other than instructions to shelter in place. “Staff members and counselors were not assigned any responsibilities in the event of that kind of an evacuation. This was a fatal error,” Massengale said.
- Camp Mystic did not adequately prepare for the storm: The camp had received weather alerts warning of a storm on July 3, investigators said. Camp Mystic “had the means to inform itself and to appropriately protect its campers from severe weather,” Massengale said. “Our investigation showed that apart from what Dick Eastland was likely doing, nobody else at the camp was watching that night.”
There’s more, but the other bullet points listed were further errors by Camp Mystic. I appreciate the work done by the investigators, and I do think the Lege did a decent job of addressing the obvious deficiencies, once they were through with the higher Republican priorities like redistricting. For the foreseeable future, at least, I do think Texas’ camps and campers are safer.
The problem, of course, is that conditions and risks change over time, and all we ever do is react to what has happened rather than prepare for what is coming. I look at that first item and can’t help but wonder why something as basic as not having compliant emergency plans wasn’t detected by an inspector, with the camp forced to remediate it at the risk of its license. That would of course require us to have a more robust regulatory scheme, and a willingness to spend a sufficient amount to enforce it. That ain’t how we roll in this state, and so here we are.
What that means is that at some point in the future, the laws passed now and the inspections/enforcement protocols in place now will become inadequate, as climate change alters and elevates the risk profile. It’s just a matter of time before bigger, stronger, faster-moving, less-predictable storms become more common, and what we are doing today will not be enough to truly mitigate the risk. We all know what happens next, because it has happened before, multiple times, every couple of decades. Just long enough for us all to forget the last time, and wonder how it is that this thing could have happened. We could take steps now to address that, to reassess the risk every couple of years and make adjustments as needed. But history says we won’t do that. The Chron has more.