FEMA removed dozens of Camp Mystic buildings from 100-year flood map before expansion, records show : NPR

Debris at the Mystic Camp in Hunt, Texas, Monday, July 7, 2025, after a flash flood swept the region.

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Eli Hartman / AP

Federal regulators have repeatedly given the calls to withdraw the buildings from the Mystic Camp from their 100 -year flood map, loosening surveillance while the camp operated and widened in a dangerous flood plain in the years preceding the precipitation of the waters that won children and advisers, an examination of the Associated Press.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious summer camp for girls in a “special flood risk zone” in its national flood insurance card for the county of Kerr in 2011, which means that it was required to have flood insurance and faced more strict regulation on all future construction projects.

This designation means that an area is likely to be flooded during a 100 -year flood – a more serious for it to have only 1% chance of occurring during a given year.

Located in a lower area along the Guadalupe river, in a region known as Blood Inonding Alley, Camp Mystic has lost at least 27 campers and longtime advisers and owner Dick Eastland when historic flood waters have torn its property before dawn on July 4.

The flood was much more serious than the 100 -year -old event envisaged by FEMA, said experts, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that he took a lot of guard in a county that had no warning system.

But the aggregated professor of the University of Syracuse, Sarah Pralle, who studied in depth the determinations of the FEMA flood map, said that it was “particularly worrying” that a camp in charge of the security of so many young people would receive exemptions from the basic flood regulations.

“It is a mystery to me why they did not take proactive measures to remove risk structures, not to mention to challenge what seems to be a very reasonable card which shows that these structures were in the flood zone of 100 years,” she said.

The motorhome affairs outside one of the cabins on the Mystic camp.

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Camp Mystic did not respond to emails who asked for comments and calls to that sounded unanswered. The camp described the flood of “unimaginable tragedy” and added Thursday in a statement that he had restored power in order to communicate with his supporters.

Fema exempted buildings on old and new sites

In response to a call, FEMA in 2013 modified the county flood map to remove 15 of the buildings from the risk area camp. The files show that these buildings were part of the Camp Mystic Guadalupe, 99 years old, which was devastated by last week’s flood.

After other calls, FEMA removed 15 other mystical camp structures in 2019 and 2020 of the designation. These buildings were located on the Mystic Cypress Lake camp near the camp, a sister site which opened its doors in 2020 as part of a major expansion and underwent less damage in the flood.

The campers said that the cabins of Lake Cypress resisted significant damage, but those nicknamed “the apartments” of the Guadalupe river camp were flooded.

Experts say that the requests for a mystic camp to modify the FEMA card could have been an attempt to avoid the obligation to transport flood insurance, reduce camp insurance premiums or open the way to the renovation or addition of new structures in the context of less expensive regulations.

Pralle said that calls were not surprising because communities and owners have successfully used them to protect the specific properties of the regulations.

The analysis shows the risks of flooding on both camps

Regardless of FEMA determinations, the risk was obvious.

At least 12 structures at the Mystic Guadalupe camp were entirely in the FTAMA flood plain, and a few others were in part in this area, according to an analysis of data provided by First Street, a data company specializing in climate risk modeling.

Jeremy Porter, the head of climatic implications at First Street, said that the FEMA flood insurance card underestimates the risk of flooding. Indeed, it does not take into account the effects of strong precipitation on small navigable lanes such as rivers and streams. The model of First Street puts almost the entire Mystic Guadalupe camp in danger for a 100 -year flood.

The buildings of the new site of Lake Cypress are more distant from the southern fork of the river subject to floods but adjacent to Cypress Creek. The flood plain of FEMA does not consider the small navigable track as a risk.

However, the model of First Street, which takes into account the heavy rains and the runoff reaching the stream, shows that the majority of Lake Cypress site is in an area which has 1% of flooding during a given year.

In a press release, FEMA minimized the meaning of the flood map amendments.

“Flooding cards are snapshots in time designed to show minimum standards for the management of floods and the highest risk areas for flood insurance,” the agency wrote. “These are not predictions of the place where it will flood, and they do not show where he has already flooded.”

An “arduous” call process can help owners

The landowners contesting the cards designations of FEMA hire engineers to conduct detailed studies to show where they believe that the 100 -year flood plain should actually be drawn. It is a “fairly difficult process” which can lead to more precise cards while facilitating future construction, said Chris Steubing, Executive Director of Texas Floodplain Management Association, an industrial group which represents the managers of floods.

Pralle, who examined the modifications of the AP, noted that some of the exempt properties were less than 2 feet (0.6 meters) of the Fema’s flood plain by the revised calculations of the camp, which, according to her, left almost no margin of error. She said her research shows that FEMA approves about 90% of map requests, and the process can promote rich and well connected.

The personal effects of campers outside one of the cabins of the Mystic camp.

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A study she published in 2021 with the Devin Lea researcher analyzed more than 20,000 buildings that had been removed from FEMA flooding cards. He found that changes occurred more often in places where the properties of properties were higher, more whites lived and that the buildings were more recent.

The camp extended after a “huge success”

FEMA had warned in its amendments that other parts of the Mystic camp have remained on the flood map, and that “any future construction or substantial improvement” would be subject to regulations for the management of the flood plain.

County officials not only allowed the camp to continue working, but also to develop.

Considered the royalty of Texas after decades of care for girls from elite families, the owners of Mystic Camp Dick and Tweety Eastland cited “the enormous success” of their original camp to explain the need for a second site nearby.

The expansion included new cabins and a dining room, a chapel, a range of archery and more. The camp had 557 campers and more than 100 staff members between its two locations when a state license agency made an inspection on July 2, two days before the tragedy, according to the files.

FEMA has returned questions about expansion to local officials, who did not answer messages asking for comments.

Steubing, a longtime municipal engineer in Texas, said the rain and the floods that hit Kerr’s county in a few hours were so much more intense than everything in his story that it is difficult to call the direction of the flood plain.

Local officials probably thought they were following the existing regulations when they allowed the camp to continue to grow, but “then Mother Nature established a new standard,” he said.

“You could have built things 2 feet (0.6 meters) more, 3 feet (0.9 meters) higher, and they could still be removed,” he said.