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Posted
34 minutes ago, bluto said:

Just hit me that if a governor/state office really put the camps through the paces on disaster planning maga world woulda shouted it down bc of ‘more regulations’

Well also, according to the transcribed words of their own city officials, those little kids weren't from there, they are outsiders, so their lives weren't as important.

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Posted
26 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I would expect that we will see a indepth report from the NY Times at some point in the next 9-12 months. They usually perform deep dives into disasters especially where leadership failings are involved. They need the time to go through documents, fight to get govt info, and perform interviews.

it won't take that long

the template for a color-by-number indictment is already out there

it was published on 2 may 2000

the conclusions of an in-depth report should read something like this:

+++

How do the failed barriers fit together?

The 2025 atrocity is neither a 2025 problem, nor a 2025 camp/citizen/tourist problem, nor a 2025 State/County/City government problem.  It is instead a true example of an organizational accident with causes that existed for some time before the event.  While no one person is responsible for the atrocity, the aggregate effect of actions and decisions by government officials and those they serve, over many years, created the physical conditions that made the atrocity possible.

For the current State, County and Local governments, Guadalupe Flooding was, and is, an institution.  And leaders do not change institutions unless there is a clearly perceived need for change.

Guadalupe Flooding has grown from isolated events lost in institutional memories trapped in time into an atrocity with massive loss of life.  From just a dozen deaths to hundreds.  From the occasional high-water cleanup to a 100-year event every 10 years.  For Guadalupe Flooding, the State, County and Local government’s role was to ensure that controls were in place so that if and when a flood occurred, the results would be non-consequential.  But as Guadalupe Flooding has grown in frequency and intensity, the actions and decisions by government officials, taken or not taken, to prevent the flooding, have remained the same.

The State of Texas, Kerr County and the City of Kerrville do not have a proactive risk management approach for Guadalupe Flooding.  As a result, behavioral and safety problems never prompted past or present administrations to reassess Guadalupe Flooding risk to campers, citizens and tourists.

The State of Texas, Kerr County and the City of Kerrville have a culture that instills bias and tunnel vision in decision making.  No one in the current or past administrations ever interpreted ongoing behavioral problems as indications that Guadalupe Flooding risk mitigation was beyond the capabilities of past or present administrations.

There was no appropriate plan, policy or program to mitigate the risk of Guadalupe Flooding.  Instead, important design details were communicated through an oral tradition.  As a result, Guadalupe Flooding risk mitigation was never undertaken the same way twice, even though the accepted basis for risk mitigation was “we have always done it this way, and it has always worked.”  Thus, changes made in the absence of a sound risk mitigation strategy reduced critical margins of safety.

Kerr County and City of Kerrville leaders were the sole design authority for Guadalupe Flooding risk mitigation. Yet they did not have the knowledge or skills necessary to identify and correct structural and institutional deficiencies of the type that caused the 2025 atrocity.

Though its individual components are complex, the central message is clear.  The atrocity was about physical failures driven by organizational failures, the origins of which span decades.  No single factor caused the atrocity, just as no single change will ensure that a tragedy like this never happens again.

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Posted

Just to keep everyone on the same page regarding Noem:  she is accused of slow-playing FEMA response, not Federal response (some of which she has no control over).  She's crowing about Coast Guard, etc. being there quickly, which is true, but FEMA has a different role in these disasters and she absolutely handcuffed their ability to respond by (a) instituting policy that she has to approve all responses above $100K and (b) waiting almost 3 days to do so for these floods.

I don't expect any "journalists" to actually push back with facts.

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Gourmand said:

 

No question whatsoever that Kerr County officials royally failed to protect the citizens of the county and the visitors on one of the busiest weekends of the year, but imo not enough attention is being given to the decisive actions of the operators at Camp Mo, who evacuated everyone in advance and likely saved many lives in doing so. 

2 hours ago, TreatyOak said:

100% this. Makes Camp Mystic's leadership even more culpable.  

Exactly. It was as simple as having a supervisor (or just about anyone, really) awake and paying attention, and then just giving the order to evacuate up the hill. Sickeningly simple. 

Edited by wood
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Posted
2 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

And they were unwilling to use a portion of their regular budget. 

Yep. Forgot about that. And oh yeah, the sirens would be 'too noisy' or somesuch.

Posted

the minutes for the december 2016 meeting where they discuss the $1m funds already approved by obama - that's the tell

any journalist doing a deep dive has to start there, chase down everyone who was in the room and ask the same question:

you had a million dollars approved for sirens - who owned the paperwork to get that money - is there a written record of the decision not to take the money before the 20jan17 deadline - if there is no written record of this decision - do you know who took the decision, when and why?

offer to take the responses off the record - eventually guilt or the fear of being hung out to dry will cause someone to crack and spill the tea

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Posted
5 minutes ago, wood said:

Probably won't amount to much, but I just tweeted this. Any of y'all on X could retweet it to whatever news agency or reporter you can think of. Who knows. Might catch someone's eye.

 

I'm not on Xitter, but send that to https://twitter.com/tplohetski. He's the best investigative guy I know of in Austin media.

 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

the minutes for the december 2016 meeting where they discuss the $1m funds already approved by obama - that's the tell

any journalist doing a deep dive has to start there, chase down everyone who was in the room and ask the same question:

you had a million dollars approved for sirens - who owned the paperwork to get that money - is there a written record of the decision not to take the money before the 20jan17 deadline - if there is no written record of this decision - do you know who took the decision, when and why?

offer to take the responses off the record - eventually guilt or the fear of being hung out to dry will cause someone to crack and spill the tea

The "liberal" media won't do that because it would make conservative officials look bad. We'll continue to get a lot of passive voice bullshit about how the grant "fell through" or "failed to receive approval." It's the exonerative tense they usually reserve for cops who lie to them about a police shooting.  

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Posted
2 hours ago, bolverk said:

This is the most detailed account that I've come across so far about the locals' bungling response and what transpired at Camp Mystic.

From the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/us/texas-flood-local-response.html (free link: https://archive.is/z10jl)

Bells don’t need electricity. Probably could have used a bell as a warning device. Better than nothing.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Bells don’t need electricity. Probably could have used a bell as a warning device. Better than nothing.

The problem with that is, the desire to protect children is outweighed by the Second Amendment's right to sleep through the night.

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Posted
So does Patrick tie  funding the flood warning system into the hemp ban?

Nope. To redistricting. See, this wouldn’t have happened if we’d eliminated all democratic Congress people from Texas.
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Posted
5 hours ago, Horn Dog said:

But I assume that since San Antonio is less than half the distance than Austin, they must of sent their entire FD to  successfully save Kerville at 4am and that that is why San Antonio FD is not run by incompetent DEI.  Correct?

Charlie Kirk went to one semester of community college. You think he could point to San Antonio on a map, much less describe its relative location to Kerr County?

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Posted
2 hours ago, C-Man said:

Mystic is going to get sued into Bolivia and will not exist moving forward. Yes, they should've been more prepared considering they were ultimately responsible for 750 or so young women aged 8-18 or so. It does not change the fact that there apparently was not a well-oiled early flood alert system in place for Kerr County. That's on them and also to the state leadership. But Mystic will pay the ultimate price because you can't sue City Hall and all that. El Paso, Uvalde, Mystic -- ain't nothin' gonna change until enough people get fed up and vote these no-talent assclowns out of office. I hope I live to see that day.

Amidst all of this sometimes I have to stop and think about those poor teens who were acting as counselors at Mystic and the nightmares and guilt they are going to carry forever.  And while I do imagine they come from privileged and affluent backgrounds, still to be placed in a position of life or death for people who trust them is not a place to put those kids.  There are a thousand ways that could have been different, but there is no reason for a camp that charges that much would not have a trained adult assigned to those cabins.  To have to live with the questions about whether you did something wrong, or missed some announcement, or ignored some part of a lecture on emergency response is a lot to ask those kids.  Those who survived, that is.

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Yeah, I've read that same stuff, but I haven't seen it picked up by any mainstream news outlet yet. Instead, it's been couched as "they weren't able to secure a grant" or somesuch. 

 

I saw a segment on CBS online Tuesday which called out the commissioner's court hard.  They had quotes from Buster and his picture, explaining how he has since passed.  But there was no doubt they had done their research and were casting blame on that group.    I have also seen other media reports that stop just short of accusing, but lead the viewer to answer the hanging questions.  Unfortunately, that just isn't enough for lots of people.  They have no critical thought process.  

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Posted
12 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

Amidst all of this sometimes I have to stop and think about those poor teens who were acting as counselors at Mystic and the nightmares and guilt they are going to carry forever.  And while I do imagine they come from privileged and affluent backgrounds, still to be placed in a position of life or death for people who trust them is not a place to put those kids.  There are a thousand ways that could have been different, but there is no reason for a camp that charges that much would not have a trained adult assigned to those cabins.  To have to live with the questions about whether you did something wrong, or missed some announcement, or ignored some part of a lecture on emergency response is a lot to ask those kids.  Those who survived, that is.

I saw a segment on CBS online Tuesday which called out the commissioner's court hard.  They had quotes from Buster and his picture, explaining how he has since passed.  But there was no doubt they had done their research and were casting blame on that group.    I have also seen other media reports that stop just short of accusing, but lead the viewer to answer the hanging questions.  Unfortunately, that just isn't enough for lots of people.  They have no critical thought process.  

Re: that CBS video, I'd love to watch it. You got a link? 

Re: the Counselors, my kid, the middle class son of a teacher and a firefighter, was a camp counselor at Camp Longhorn when he was 16 -18. Part of the appeal was getting to be at a camp we couldn't afford to send him to at the time. He had never been to any camp other than Baylor's fucked up, shitty hoops camp, so he had no experience and his training was on the job. He worked his ass off, learned a lot, and had a blast, but at least at first, he had no training at all other than the sexual conduct training, some videos, and then a meeting for a few hours just before 'active duty'. He was working under a more experienced, older camp counselor who he reported to.

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Posted
3 hours ago, bluto said:

Just hit me that if a governor/state office really put the camps through the paces on disaster planning maga world woulda shouted it down bc of ‘more regulations’

NoGestapoinBastropo.jpg

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Posted
1 hour ago, wood said:

Probably won't amount to much, but I just tweeted this. Any of y'all on X could retweet it to whatever news agency or reporter you can think of. Who knows. Might catch someone's eye.

 

I honestly think journalists can't wrap their heads around the notion that politicians would turn down federal dollars because they come from the opposing party. It just doesn't compute that politics has infected every aspect of the Republican governance.

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, wood said:

Probably won't amount to much, but I just tweeted this. Any of y'all on X could retweet it to whatever news agency or reporter you can think of. Who knows. Might catch someone's eye.

 

 

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

I'm not on Xitter, but send that to https://twitter.com/tplohetski. He's the best investigative guy I know of in Austin media.

 

 

Meeting notes from where the Biden money was discussed and tabled.

 

https://legacy.co.kerr.tx.us/commcrt/minutes/2021/110821(CC).txt

Edited by Captain Ron
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Posted
2 minutes ago, wood said:

He worked his ass off, learned a lot, and had a blast, but at least at first, he had no training at all other than the sexual conduct training, some videos, and then a meeting for a few hours just before 'active duty'. He was working under a more experienced, older camp counselor who he reported to.

Sounds like my daughter's camp experience.  She was a camper for a couple years, then a counselor-in-training for two more, and then a counselor after her senior year and now this year after her freshman year of college.  I never thought to ask her what kind of training she had to go through in order to be come a counselor.  I assumed at the very least some basic CPR and water safety, but mostly she just worked her ass off learning how to operate and organize the camp. 

I seriously doubt she had any training that would remotely prepare her to get herself and the young girls in her cabin swiftly to safety after waking up in the middle of the night to water rising in her cabin only to get swept away by raging waters filled with trees, cars, and other heavy debris moving at lightening speed.  It's a nightmare scenario, but parents of camp kids watched that happen last week, and I don't think any of us feel like our kids would be trained for that, and we can only hope their mentally and physically strong and quick enough to deal with that. 

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Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, wood said:

Exactly. It was as simple as having a supervisor (or just about anyone, really) awake and paying attention, and then just giving the order to evacuate up the hill. Sickeningly simple. 

This is what I've been kinda confused about. Did this camp not have someone awake and on watch through the night for security or any other kind of emergency? With hundreds of young girls there?

 

ETA: NYT article linked up-thread says there was a retired police officer on site for security, and that some girls went to tell him about the flooding, but the article just leaves it at that and it's unclear when in the timeline of events he was notified or what he tried to do. The chronology of events in the article is pretty murky in general. 

Edited by Hookah Horns
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Posted
17 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

This is what I've been kinda confused about. Did this camp not have someone awake and on watch through the night for security or any other kind of emergency? With hundreds of young girls there?

 

ETA: NYT article linked up-thread says there was a retired police officer on site for security, and that some girls went to tell him about the flooding, but the article just leaves it at that and it's unclear when in the timeline of events he was notified or what he tried to do. The chronology of events in the article is pretty murky in general. 

Morbid thought: Did he have Uvalde on his resume?

Posted
2 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

This is what I've been kinda confused about. Did this camp not have someone awake and on watch through the night for security or any other kind of emergency? With hundreds of young girls there?

That's been a source of confusion for me as well. The Daily podcast interviewed a former camper from Dallas, Erin Paisan, about her time as a camper at Camp Mystic and at one point she is asked by Michael Barbaro if they were ever taught to see the river as something dangerous. She says something along the lines of being more afraid of intruders coming across the river (as a function of horror movies in the 70's/80's most likely) and that the camp took the safety and security of those girls extremely seriously, such that they had a night watchman posted on the river in a chair every night armed with a shotgun. Of course, she is recounting an experience decades old so I'm not sure how that compared to more recent years, but you have to assume they always had someone watching over the camp at night. Right????

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/podcasts/the-daily/camp-mystic-texas-flood.html

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Posted
22 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

The chronology of events in the article is pretty murky in general. 

one of the cbs articles i posted this morning says the mystic survivors have told their parents the bubble inn flooding started between 2am and 3am

the mystic girls that perished were dead by 3am

the timeline reconstruction is pointless and damning

what happened in kerr county or kerrville city government before 3am?

nothing

 

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Posted
25 minutes ago, Hookah Horns said:

This is what I've been kinda confused about. Did this camp not have someone awake and on watch through the night for security or any other kind of emergency? With hundreds of young girls there?

 

ETA: NYT article linked up-thread says there was a retired police officer on site for security, and that some girls went to tell him about the flooding, but the article just leaves it at that and it's unclear when in the timeline of events he was notified or what he tried to do. The chronology of events in the article is pretty murky in general. 

 

1 minute ago, Gourmand said:

That's been a source of confusion for me as well. The Daily podcast interviewed a former camper from Dallas, Erin Paisan, about her time as a camper at Camp Mystic and at one point she is asked by Michael Barbaro if they were ever taught to see the river as something dangerous. She says something along the lines of being more afraid of intruders coming across the river (as a function of horror movies in the 70's/80's most likely) and that the camp took the safety and security of those girls extremely seriously, such that they had a night watchman posted on the river in a chair every night armed with a shotgun. Of course, she is recounting an experience decades old so I'm not sure how that compared to more recent years, but you have to assume they always had someone watching over the camp at night. Right????

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/podcasts/the-daily/camp-mystic-texas-flood.html

 

There have been a couple of helpful posts about security in the DT thread--still not much detail. I'm screenshotting because it just makes it easier to read here, but I'm also posting links to them if you want to go over there and read them in full.

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/44774-july-4th-hill-country-flooding-tragedy/page/15/#comment-7195407
image.thumb.png.685fac35aa2a5537abb560d5a9f9a28d.png

 

https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/topic/44774-july-4th-hill-country-flooding-tragedy/page/14/#comment-7195341
image.thumb.png.4bcd3b4bc8fab615424c6ba724fcda07.png

 

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Posted
5 hours ago, Pam Cummings said:

Well also, according to the transcribed words of their own city officials, those little kids weren't from there, they are outsiders, so their lives weren't as important.

Wait wut

Posted

I'm hearing from trusted sources that things weren't quite as reverent and Godly with the owners of Camp Mystic as their reputation would have us believe. Apparently, there was a major falling out that has split the family into two factions. For the last ten years, they have been spending a fortune in lawsuits against each other. This has quite possibly put a major strain on their finances and may be partly responsible for the shortcomings they experienced when time was critical last week.  

Posted
5 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

I'm hearing from trusted sources that things weren't quite as reverent and Godly with the owners of Camp Mystic as their reputation would have us believe. Apparently, there was a major falling out that has split the family into two factions. For the last ten years, they have been spending a fortune in lawsuits against each other. This has quite possibly put a major strain on their finances and may be partly responsible for the shortcomings they experienced when time was critical last week.  

Search of Kerr County District Court cases - nothing recent or active.

Eastland.jpg

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Posted
1 minute ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

I read an article over the weekend that said collectively the had spent around $6 million on intrafamily litigation.

That all seems to have concluded via settlement around 2011.

The scheme described then was a land-ownership corporation, Natural Fountains, that owned the land, and a camp-operation corporation, Camp Mystic, Inc., that ran the camp, collected the fees and paid rent to Natural Fountains.  

Those family members not actively running the camp owned Natural Fountains, mostly; those running the camp, I.e. Dick and Tweety, owned Camp Mystic, Inc.

It's conceivable that separating the ownership of the land from the operation of the camp insulates the land from the negligence claims sure to come.  

And all of that may have changed through the settlement.  Also, the recent opening of the Cypress Lake branch may a) reflect some new harmony among the family and b) still more changes to the corporate structure.

 

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Posted
45 minutes ago, TreatyOak said:

I'm hearing from trusted sources that things weren't quite as reverent and Godly with the owners of Camp Mystic as their reputation would have us believe. Apparently, there was a major falling out that has split the family into two factions. For the last ten years, they have been spending a fortune in lawsuits against each other. This has quite possibly put a major strain on their finances and may be partly responsible for the shortcomings they experienced when time was critical last week.  

 

10 minutes ago, Cousin Strawberry said:

I read an article over the weekend that said collectively the had spent around $6 million on intrafamily litigation.

 

1 minute ago, TwiceHorn said:

That all seems to have concluded via settlement around 2011.

Texas Monthly

Litigation - even expensive litigation - ending 13-14 years ago, should not be a factor in this tragedy.  Certainly, no impact on government failures.  And, hard to imagine it prevented them from staying up and remaining plugged in, posting a watchman, etc. on a night that called for it.

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