Camp Mystic leader, who died trying to save small children, waited over an hour after alert before starting evacuation

Camp Mystic leader, who died trying to save small children, waited over an hour after alert before starting evacuation

The adult leader of Camp Mystic, the Texas summer camp where 27 children and counselors died in the Hill Country floods, waited more than an hour after receiving a severe flood warning before initiating an evacuation, it was disclosed on Monday.

Richard “Dick” Eastland, who had run the popular all-girls, Christian-values sleepaway camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River with his family since the 1980s, was among the fatalities after a wall of water rushed through the camp early on 4 July.

A spokesperson for the Eastland family told the Washington Post that a National Weather Service (NWS) alert was sent to his phone at 1.14am warning of “life threatening flash flooding”, and only at 2.30am, with heavy rain still falling and the river level rising fast, he made the decision to begin evacuations.

  • TacoEvent@lemmy.zipEnglish
    523·
    5 days ago

    I’m not sure what this article is trying to imply but if I got an evac alert at 1am I would be dead because I would’ve been asleep.

    • Chozo@fedia.io
      535·
      5 days ago

      Yeah, this seems like a weird way to place blame on the victims of a natural disaster. Because, y’know, we all do our best critical thinking at 1:00 in the morning. Article strangely makes no mention of the local government voting against flood warning sirens in that exact location, though.

      • Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish
        43·
        5 days ago

        It is a weird way. Particularly when there are much better ways to assign blame to this particular individual whom the guardian refers to as the “camp leader” and the person who ran the camp, when he was, in fact, the owner.

        Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.

        The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a “Special Flood Hazard Area” in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.

        That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.

        He repeatedly got exemptions from regulation that might require him to update or move old buildings and meet more stringent construction requirements over the last decade and a half even as the expanded the camp in the flood plain putting even more kids and counselors at risk.

        • aramis87@fedia.io
          27·
          5 days ago

          To my mind, that just makes it worse: he knows he’s in a flood plain, he’s got repeated exemptions to expand his camp in excess of normal regulation and procedures, be gets a flash flood warning, and he still doesn’t evacuate?

          • Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish
            111·
            4 days ago

            Yep. I imagine he waited an hour hoping it wasn’t a real disaster then freaked out realizing how ducked he would be of anyone died. I feel like he died trying to save his own ass more than anything else.

            Edit: Ducked…? Meh, I’ll leave it.

        • Uli@sopuli.xyz
          10·
          5 days ago

          That’s the classic flaw with flood plane exemptions. The floods don’t tend to care. Next time, if they want to be exempt from flooding, they need to get out the old fashioned map and Sharpie.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          4 days ago

          They didn’t have phones and even if they did it’s easy to sleep through a phone alert at 1am during a loud storm.

          • Railing5132@lemmy.world
            3·
            4 days ago

            I replied elsewhere, but I’m gonna stick it here as well for visibility:

            NOAA Weather Radios go off like alarm clocks when warnings are issued. Loud as hell. We hear ours 1 floor away through closed doors with a fan and a white noise machine. This camp absolutely should have had not 1 but 2 of these in separate locations.

            I’m the emergency manager of a camp. We have redundant alert and notification systems, a full All Hazards emergency plan and drill routinely for sheltering and evacuation.

            No less should have been done for these kids. This is 100% on the hands of the leadership of the camp. Full stop.

    • visc@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      5 days ago

      I think it might be trying to imply that if you were the only one with communications equipment in a known extreme flood risk zone full of children that you are responsible for, you had better not be sleeping at 1am. Also that you probably shouldn’t have fought as hard to be allowed to be in this situation.

    • Railing5132@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 days ago

      NOAA Weather Radios go off like alarm clocks when warnings are issued. Loud as hell. We hear ours 1 floor away through closed doors with a fan and a white noise machine. This camp absolutely should have had not 1 but 2 of these in separate locations.

      I’m the emergency manager of a camp. We have redundant alert and notification systems, a full All Hazards emergency plan and drill routinely for sheltering and evacuation.

      No less should have been done for these kids. This is 100% on the hands of the leadership of the camp. Full stop.

    • IWW4@lemmy.zip
      41·
      4 days ago

      Yea I agree, about ten years ago I moved to a waterfront place and I get flood alerts for my area often and 9 times out of 10 nothing comes of it.

      Now I am not a commercial entity.