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TreatyOak

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Posts posted by TreatyOak

  1. 10 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    And it remains to be fully explained what exactly Kerr County did in response to the flash flood watch and warning alerts sent out by NWS, you're absolutely right that the camp itself may be victim of the county's negligence in all of this.

    We know exactly what Kerr County did during the flash flood 'cause they told us. The city manager said in his press conference that he went for a run at 3:30am. You know...standard emergency protocol.  

  2. 1 minute ago, jimmyjazz said:

    Well, it's certainly possible that the plan was acceptable and the camp just didn't follow it.

    What annoys me is all the people on Facebook referring to the owner of the camp as a heroe*. If he was the leader of a camp where my child was killed 'cause they didn't evacuate in time, I would be using a few other words to describe him. 

    The surviving owner can say whatever they want about not being warned, but I am guessing the lawyers for the families will uncover what really went down. 

    * We have a lot of uneducated morons in this country. 

     

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  3. 6 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    The issue I have here is that the State kept no records as copy of the evac plan. They were all on-site and likely destroyed in the flood. So there isn't really an authoritative record of their plan that was approved aside from "trust me, bro"

    I have a hard time believing that the plan was acceptable, given the empirical outcome of its execution. And yet, expressing that opinion is somehow political in the eyes of the overlords.

    It appears there were systemic failures at many levels. As many have written here, I think they were killed by complacency, which is odd considering the area is called, "Flash Flood Alley."

    The town of Comfort had sirens and they were able to evacuate everyone in time. However, Comfort was further down the river, so people had more of a chance of advance warning.  

    There is a report that parents will be getting the camp letters from their now-deceased children in the mail this week.  

  4. 31 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

    Yes, from what I have read the camps were responsible for having their own plans.  That's ridiculous, because it's akin to each student writing their own test questions.  How do you judge the strength of a plan without a standard to hold it to?   Just more passing responsibility along.

    Thanks for being a First Responder. Perhaps our disagreement is over semantics, but IMHO, any school, club, organization, camp, etc., that takes care of large numbers of people should have their own plan for evacuation. If experts can evaluate and correct it, all the better, but surely any plan is better than no plan. As we all know from the The Station night club fire in Rhode Island, disaster happens in seconds. Love to hear your thoughts. 

  5. Timeline now showing 22 warnings were issued from Thursday afternoon at 1pm through Friday afternoon. 

    The city manager dude saw the alerts but apparently made no effort to alert anyone in any way. He did go for a run...at 3:30am. You know, normal emergency protocol.

    I'm amazed that people are defending the camp morons. They're calling the owner a 'heroe' (popular Facebook spelling) for dying while trying to save girls. This idiot either ignored the flash-flood warnings starting at 1pm on Thursday, including the evacuation warning at 1am on Friday, or he didn't receive the warnings. Either way, he is 100% culpable. 

    It's weird. It's almost like the local authorities didn't do anything when it mattered most, which is previously unheard of in Texas.

    New developments surrounding the Uvalde mass shooter

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  6. There really is no limit to how stupid people are. A few years back, we had flooding across Bee Cave Rd at the low water crossing in Rollingwood. Water was pouring across the road and moving fast. Police had blocked off the road with a roadblock and flashing lights, and were making people turn around. A couple of cars in front of me, a man was begging the police to let him drive through it. I was imagining what he was saying: “I’ve got to pick up my dry cleaning.” The cops told him to back up and turn the fuck around. Unbelievable. 

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  7. 5 minutes ago, troph said:

    ...but it does not appear that the State and local counties and municipalities were talking to each other as they should have been.

    The thing is, this is EXACTLY what government is supposed to be here for, but no, we have to legislate against the boogeyman and do performative bullshit instead.

    Not surprising at all. In fact, government entities not speaking to each other seems to be the norm, rather than the exception. During 911, the NY Fire Dept and the NY Police Dept had no way of communicating with each other in place. Zero. They have supposedly remedied that problem.

    More incredible, the Army and Navy didn't communicate w/ each other before the Pearl Harbor attack, and both assumed the other was flying far-reaching patrols, when in reality, neither was. 

     

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  8. A couple of points about Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice claim (in the press conference) that he went out for a morning run at 3:30am Friday morning while the flood was happening:

    1. That seems...weird

    2. Why wasn't he alerting people to the potential danger? Surely he had gotten the 1am flash flood alert.

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  9. 1 hour ago, Texas Fight said:

    So, you didn’t really care that much? Your reaction on what you would do otherwise doesn’t seem to match your desire for any due diligence. You can’t have it both ways. I mean, you knew this camp was in a flood plain, no? You can’t see where the cabins are, no? Any moron can see this coming 100 miles away, no?

    I think you missed my point. I was trying to communicate the general mindset of summer camp parents. We didn't deeply investigate the various facilities 'cause we assumed that they were safe. "They're expensive and all my friend's kids have been going for years, so they must be fine, yes?"  

    In retrospect, that maybe wasn't the best mindset. But it's also not uncommon to assume that a camp facility would evacuate kids in a bad rain situation, or at least, investigate and keep an eye on all warning signs. And this one, apparently, was built on a flood plain. 

    As I mentioned, a camp in Marble Falls, maybe Camp Champions, did evacuate last summer as a storm approached. Looks like the camp management at Mystic really dropped the ball.   

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  10. 58 minutes ago, bolverk said:

    I can't speak for anyone else here, but the locals hosting visitors (owners of the camps, the RV park owners, the city, and the county) are primarily to blame. They live there. They know the history of flooding. They chose not to have a flood monitoring system. They chose not to have a warning system. They chose not to have adequate evacuation plans. On top of that, I blame the state for not adequately funding a regional system, as well as this regime for stripping resources from the NWS.

    27 minutes ago, Texas Fight said:

    The buildings and the owners are there 24/7/365.  This should be known to them. 

    I agree with these posts 100% that the camp is greatly to blame. The county bears plenty responsibility, but when your business is entrusted with the lives of hundreds of children and teens, you have better have a fucking good system in place to anticipate danger and protect lives. The Hill Country is well know to have a high level of flash floods. They should have been monitoring all the news and the 1PM Thursday weather warning should have been enough for them to take action. Perhaps they could have had their OWN audio warning system and escape procedures in place. And if, as people are claiming, they didn't get any warnings due to the bad cell service, that is 100% on them. Like I wrote about last summer, my friend's daughter's camp was evacuated a day in advance of a storm.   

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  11. 1 minute ago, chainsaw said:

    I'm supposed to be mad about a non-deployment decision from June 2 that might have improved rescue operations on June 4? How long does it actually take to bring out swift boats from Austin to Kerr County? Wouldn't Baker needed to have known, ahead of time, exactly where along the Guadalupe to send those boats? Is that even possible? And if he'd done that and the rain bomb had landed in the City of Austin how would Baker explain that the swift boats were several counties away?

    I'm sorry I just don't understand the accusation here.

    I do not understand the accusation either. Just sharing it for info. Perhaps this is the result of an ongoing feud. 

  12. This wild post came out two hours ago from the Austin Firefighters Association. They are apparently furious and claiming that the Austin Fire Chief would not deploy his water rescue teams due to budget concerns. 

    It brings the Austin Firefighters no pleasure to report to the community that the Austin Fire Chief DENIED the deployment of Austin firefighters to Kerrville until very late into the event (so today!), with the exception of only 3 AFD rescue swimmers who helped staff helo teams (which still were NOT deployed until the afternoon of the 4th).
    The Austin Firefighter Special Operations teams are specially trained for Hill Country swift water rescue and are some of the best, if not the best, swift water boat teams in the State of Texas.
    It is absolutely outrageous that the Austin Fire Chief, Joel G. Baker, would not allow highly trained firefighters from Austin to respond to Kerrville. Because of this egregious dereliction of duty, LIVES WERE VERY LIKELY LOST BECAUSE OF CHIEF BAKER’S DECISION!
    Deployment orders came down from the State of Texas on July 2. We would've been pre-deployed before the waters even began to rise!
    It is unforgivable that a fire chief would NOT allow his firefighters to answer the call to save lives.
    Why would Fire Chief Joel G. Baker do this, you may ask? It was a misguided attempt to save money. I say “misguided” because the fire department is fully reimbursed by the state to deploy. I explained the reimbursement process to Chief Baker last week, and he failed to understand this very simple concept.
    We are disgusted with our fire chief. He needs to be held accountable and fired for his disgraceful dereliction of duty.
    The Austin Firefighters are starting a vote of no confidence on Tuesday on the fire chief.
    As disgusted as we are at our Austin Fire Department leadership, the Austin Firefighters Association made a decision to not air our dirty laundry while victims and bodies were still being recovered. But it's now July 7, and it's time that we hold accountable our disgraced fire chief, AND anybody else in his leadership circle who are responsible for this horrendous act.
    The Austin Firefighters commit to being transparent to the community about this process to remove our fire chief and hold all of those accountable who were part of this atrocity.
    The firefighters hope we have your support, because it's going to get ugly.
    I can't possibly express to you how outraged and sickened the firefighters are that we were not allowed to do the job—the job that we have trained so hard and long to do—during the historic floods that just occurred in Kerrville. We could've made a difference, and we were forced to stand down and lives were lost.
    The community deserves a fire chief who cares about the community as much as our firefighters, and that is simply not the case. Joel G. Baker must go!
    Please support your Austin Firefighters by sharing this post.
    Please check this page for updates
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  13. 47 minutes ago, South Austin said:

    I think lawsuits and rebuild costs (especially if the camp buildings and other improvements were underinsured) are pretty big obstacles to overcome.

    And remember that they demolished Robb Elementary.  I know a mass school shooting is different.  But for similar reasons, I think there's going to be too much pain associated with that site to allow for Camp Mystic to ever return.

    And on a related note, since these "rare" flood events are becoming much more common, I wonder how many parents who send their kids to Texas camps located along a river or lake will reconsider.  And for those camps who aren't located in areas as vulnerable, you can bet your ass that their leadership will be preparing detailed disaster response plans and circulate those to parents in the coming years.

    Last year, my business partner's daughter attended a camp in Marble Falls on one of the lakes. They got a weather warning a couple of days in advance to evacuate and everyone was removed from the camp. Do you believe the lawsuits will be hinged around the national weather alert that went out on Thursday at 1pm, and of course, the Friday 1am flash flood alert?  

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  14. On 7/2/2025 at 12:54 PM, Park Gothic said:

    Tua is concussion prone and Zach Wilson fucking sucks. There is no way they're cutting Quinn. 

    Tua is 100% back and by all reports, is doing much better.

    Just read this quote from him:

    "I'm really really happy with cushions. Birds are bababa. We, you, me, I, me, you. Push push push crowns deburb deburb hagdiofuau0rrioahopir0."  

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  15. Now I'm not familiar with county emergency weather protocols, but I am familiar with the English language. Does this statement from Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly seem somewhat contradictory?

    “Rest assured, no one knew this flood was coming,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said. “This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States. We deal with floods on a regular basis. We had no reason to believe this was going to be anything like what happened here, none whatsoever.”

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  16. The primary payout by Texas A&M University in connection with the 1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse was $2.1 million, agreed upon in October 2008. Under that settlement:

    • $500,000 was paid directly by the university (the maximum allowed under Texas tort law),

    • The remaining $1.6 million came from insurance policies covering university administrators

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