Camp Mystic disaster plan approved 2 days before Central Texas flood killed dozens

The Texas inspectors signed the Emergency Plan of the Mystic Camp only two days before the devastating flood no longer kills two dozen people in the Christian summer camp for girls, most of them. Five children and an advisor remain missing.

The files published on Tuesday show that the regulations on the state of the camp respected the disaster procedures, but the details of the plan remain vague. Despite the warnings of the National Weather Service, Camp Mystic did not move more than 650 campers and staff.

Mystic Disaster Plans camps

Five years of inspection reports published at the Associated Press offer no detail of the disaster plans at the camp, raising new questions about its preparation before the torrential precipitation of July 4 in the country of Texas Hill subject to floods.

The Department of States Health Services published Tuesday the files showing that the camp has respected a multitude of state regulations concerning “the procedures to be implemented in the event of a disaster”. Among them: instruct campers what to do if they need to evacuate and allocate specific tasks to each member of the staff and advisor.

The Texas administrative code presents the camp license requirements for young people. There is no specific requirement involving meteorological radios or a flood mention specifically, but a written disaster plan is required. The plan is not obliged to be subject to the State, but must be displayed on the spot.

National weather service warnings

From 3:30 am on July 3, more than 24 hours earlier, the National Weather Service warned against potential “isolated floods”.

This afternoon, at 2:30 p.m., more than 12 hours before the floods, he expressed official surveillance of the floods for the western parts of the country of the hill, including the county of Kerr.

He provided that 1 to 3 inches of rain was possible, but he also warned that he could not exclude the chance that the isolated areas would see up to 5 to 7 inches.

This danger prompted at least one of the 18 camps along the Guadalupe river to move dozens of campers to higher land.

Camp Mystic, established in 1926, did not do this and was particularly affected when the river went from 14 feet to 29.5 feet in 60 minutes early in the morning after the disaster. The floods on this guadalupe section start at around 10 feet.

The first lightning flood warning arrived at 11:42 p.m. just before midnight, for Medina, Texas, just south of Kerr County, urging people there to move immediately on higher ground.

At 1:14, the warnings of the flash floods also went to Ingram and Hunt, where several summer camps, including Mystic campare located. Again, warnings have urged people to look for higher grounds.

It was not until 3 am, almost two hours after the issue of the warning, that it reached 10 feet, which the Noaa label its “minor flood”. This also marks the stage of “action”, the level at which the Noaa says, when reached by an increasing flow, “a certain type of attenuation” becomes necessary to prepare for a possibly important activity.

From there, the river jumped.

A wall of water overwhelmed people in cabins, tents and trailers along the edge of the river. Some survivors were found hung on the trees.

Growing frustration with the warnings of floods in Texas, response

The survivors described the floods as a “black wall of death” and said that they had received no emergency warning.

Civil servants were examined On the reasons why residents and summer camps for young people along the river were not alerted earlier than 4 am or to evacuate.

Officials noted that the public can get tired of too many alerts or flood forecasts that prove to be minor.

Kerr’s county judge Rob Kelly said that the authorities had been shocked by the ferocity of the floods.

“We had no reason to believe that it was going to be, something like what happened here. None,” said Kelly “CBS Evening News”.

The potential of heavy rains has set in motion precautions when the state has activated an emergency intervention plan and has moved resources in the Central Texas region.

Mystic Inspection and Accreditation Camp

The State inspected the Mystic Camp on July 2, on the same day, the Degreen Management Division of Texas activated emergency intervention resources before the planned floods.

The inspection has found no gap or violation at the camp in a long list of health and safety criteria. A DSHS inspector signed the inspection, noting “yes” to these three criteria / questions:

“Emergency plans required

• Is there a written plan of procedures to be implemented in the event of a disaster, serious accident, epidemic or death formulated and displayed in the office or the administrative location of the camp? Yes
• Are all camp staff and volunteers informed of the emergency plan to be implemented during the staff training program or the volunteer briefing? Yes
• Is there documentation of this training kept in the office or at the administrative location of the camp? Yes”

The camp had 557 campers and more than 100 staff members at the time between its Guadalupe and Cypress Lake locations.

Camp Mystic did not respond to the requests of the Associated Press for comments on his emergency plan.

The camp notes that it is authorized by the State and a member of the Camping Association for Mutual Progress, which indicates that its objective is to “increase health and safety standards” for the summer camps. The leaders of this association did not return the messages.

The American Camp Association said on Tuesday that the Mystic camp is not accredited with this organization, whose standards focus on safety and risk management. The spokesperson Lauren McMillin refused to say if the camp had previously been accredited with the association, which is described as “the only national accreditation organization for all camps all year round and summer”.

In a press release on its website, the camp said it was “in communication with the local and state authorities that tirelessly deploy extensive resources to search for our missing daughters”.

Among the dead was Richard “Dick” Eastland, the beloved director of the camp described by campers as a paternal figure.