I never sent my girls to this camp, but knew many parents in my area who did. Over two dozen campers are still not accounted for. Also many adults and other children in the area have been killed. Numbers of the missing in the general vicinity are not clear.
What a tragedy for all involved. As the mother of two daughters, this would have been my worst nightmare. You drop off your child to a camp you have researched or sent them to previously, with no notion of a large scale tragedy happening there.
The death toll will likely be tragically high, both to campers and people who were living in the vicinity.
Our neighbors’ daughters were at Mystic but are fortunately safe.
While our budget never allowed for camp beyond a week at Girl Scout or church camp, several of our daughter’s friends were Mystic campers and later, counselors. It’s an incredibly close-knit community and heartbreaking to think about the loss of life.
Although the focus now is rightly on rescue and recovery, we must take steps to reduce the likelihood of this recurring (a similar flood occurred in the late 80’s and again about ten years ago).
I’m getting angry… This was not an earthquake or even a tornado! Why there was no warning of any kind when it was well known that tragedies happen when the area floods!
This is truly tragic. We can direct our anger and one of the most important things we can do to help prevent more tragedies is to contact our elected officials and voice our concerns and objections to the budget cuts at NOAA and the National Weather Service. Because of cuts earlier this year, we’ve already lost invaluable expertise as experienced staff were forced into early retirement, and we lost young talent who could have brought fresh skills and innovation. The NWS is short staffed and it will affect their ability to do the job we’ve always relied on them to do. Even in the best of circumstances, some weather events aren’t predictable, but our best chance of minimizing harm from severe weather and climate change is to strengthen the agency that is dedicated to research, monitoring, forecasting, and warning the public.
These cuts don’t just threaten our ability to respond to extreme weather, they also put us at risk for other tragedies in areas like public health, our food supply, and environmental safety. Our safety and preparedness depend on maintaining strong, well-supported agencies..
You would think that everyone, regardless of their race, religion, or politics, would all agree that little girls losing their lives at summer camp would be a tragedy. But after reading comments on social media or after news articles, my faith in humanity is once again dashed. Some of the people responding to this event are truly vile.
The water at 4am was rising at a reported rate of one inch every 6 seconds, or nearly one foot a minute. Even if there was an evacuation plan, unless they did that upon the first mild warning, the water came too fast, in the dark.
I am no GOP or Trump fan, at all. But Texas NWS had more than the usual complement of staff working because of the storm, and they did issue some warnings. Communities around the river had considered some sort of warning system like tornado sirens, yearsago, but itwas too expensive to implement.
I am sure mistakes have been made and regretted. I am equally certain lack of funding probably made things worse. But sometimes terrible natural tragedies are just tragedies. These poor parents, I can’t imagine.
I can’t imagine losing both of my daughters and my parents all in one fell swoop.
This family was not associated with the summer camp. Similar incidents happened a few years ago in a different area of Texas when a river flooded, taking many area vacation cabins with it. I remember reading about a man whose wife and children died when their vacation house was swept away. He somehow managed to survive, but he lost his whole family in the storm.
Sometimes there is just no way to give proper warning, but as to the children’s camp, I’m sure there will be a lot of study about whether or not this could have/should have been anticipated.
I read a similar story some years ago. The guy stepped out to visit a neighbor for just a minute. When he came, his house was swept away. With all his family. It sounded like he never got over. The article was written a few years after the incident.
From CNN article above,
Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the NWS employees’ union, told CNN that while he believes the offices had “adequate staffing and resources,” the Austin-San Antonio office is missing a warning coordination meteorologist — a role that serves as a crucial, direct link between forecasters and emergency managers.
NWS insists the warning went out with a few hours to act on. Whether it reached people seems to be the focus.
Multiple things can be true. This is a tragedy caused by a confluence of events, some beyond our control, and more could have been done.
I’m c&p’ing a FB post below by a former co-worker. This guy has been a journalist and a communications person for a local river authority in Central Texas, as well as a first responder. His post follows:
A short guide to evaluating news coverage of the Kerr County/Fredericksburg flood. Look for this information:
Does the National Weather Service have enough operating and reliable streamflow gauges in the river basins affected to predict flood events based on actual streamflow (not weather forecasts)?
Did the NOAA West Gulf River Forecast Center in Fort Worth acquire data from these gauges as the event was occurring?
Did the RFC in Fort Worth forecast the degree of flooding accurately once the rain had fallen? (When?)
Was this information transmitted to the County Judges in the region affected? They are the only ones who can force evacuations.
Was the quick rise of the river the subject of a SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) National Weather Radio alert? These things seem always to hit in the middle of the night on holidays.
Did those judges, the people responsible for the kids, mayors and emergency coordinators have working SAME enabled radios? Did the radios alarm? Was there enough time between the alarm and the flooding for anything to be done? Were telephone call-down trees to law enforcement and media triggered, if available?
If the answer to any of these is no, don’t call this tragedy an act of God. It’s the failure of a system people created.
We have chosen to live in Flash Flood Alley. It’s beautiful and rugged. Soils are thin and narrow creeks tilt sharply toward I-35, creating floods of extraordinary power. If we have allowed large numbers of people to live in harm’s way without the proper alert infrastructure and staffed government offices, that’s on us.
It reminds me of the flooding in Western North Carolina in that there were warnings that went out, even the day before, but they underestimated the extent of the rain. And that is down to climate change. These 100 or even 1000 year events are coming more often now. And it’s hard for the human mind to adjust to the new possibilities. If a precisely accurate forecast had gone out, people would not have been able to comprehend it, because even though it floods in flood alley, it hasn’t flooded like this.
I wanted to do a separate post to not take away from the message above.
So many people were on the river for the first tme, on a holiday weekend, and didn’t know/understand how flash flooding there works. I think a heavy burden lies with local officials who should know this and whose job it is to keep people safe. Spend the money to keep people safe, levying a tourism tax if need be.
I’ve lived in Texas almost my entire life, and I live in a 100-year floodplain right now. I don’t play with this stuff. But we’ve had so many new people move here who don’t know what they don’t know.
The Hill Country in Texas is known for flash floods. This disaster happened on a holiday weekend when the banks of the Guadelupe River were THE most crowded with families and people. Cell coverage in the camp Mystic area is not good. The reports coming from some of the girls/staff that were rescued is that a dam near the camp broke; which makes sense with the torrential water pouring in so quickly. There are lots of reasons why this turned into a catastrophic event… once the recovery is over there will be a deep dive into everything that went wrong. Including: communication, human error, infrastructure that had not been fixed, and probably most importantly a dedicated escape plan for all of the camps in this area. It is a truly heart-breaking and sad situation. Pray for the families, victims, and the campers that survived. There will be a lot of brokenness to fix.
Can’t imagine what the parents are going through right now.