Owners and employees of Camp Mystic are set to face questions Tuesday from Texas lawmakers investigating their handling of catastrophic flooding last year, as the state considers whether to grant the camp a license to reopen.
Their testimony is expected to come on the second day of hearings at the State Capitol in Austin about the tragedy at Camp Mystic, where 25 campers, two counselors and the camp director died after the Guadalupe River flooded camp buildings on July 4.
On Monday, members of the Eastland family, which owns the camp, listened silently in a small hearing room as legislative investigators told lawmakers that the camp did not have an evacuation plan as required by the state.
Camp Mystic has faced a renewed round of scrutiny from state officials and police. Last week, state health officials said the camp needed to make major revisions to its emergency plans in order to receive a license to partially reopen in May in an area that did not flood.
Members of the Eastland family, including a night security guard on duty during the flood, were asked to be ready to testify on Tuesday, according to a camp spokesman. The camp also faces lawsuits brought by the families of the victims. The families have argued that the owners were negligent in their preparations for an emergency and in their response to the flooding.
At Monday’s hearing, Casey Garrett, one of the legislative investigators, presented a report that said Camp Mystic’s procedures only included emergency shelter plans and did not include instructions on how to evacuate during a disaster.
“Sheltering in place is the right thing to do under certain circumstances,” Ms. Garrett, a lawyer who also investigated the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, told the joint meeting of the Texas House and Senate General Investigating Committees. “There was not an evacuation plan for when sheltering in place was no longer viable.”
Ms. Garrett also said there was inadequate training on the emergency plan.
“Campers were not instructed,” she said. “No specific assignments were given to staff or counselors.”
In harrowing detail, she described how the lack of preparation and poor communication contributed to the “mayhem” surrounding the eventual evacuation last July. Some inside the hearing room cried as Ms. Garrett showed photos and videos of flooded cabins and of children wading in the water.
The camp did not provide a statement on Monday in response to the investigators’ report. Last week, a spokesman said the camp’s owners planned to adjust their emergency plans to meet new, more stringent state requirements, and that they still intended to reopen on May 30.
In her presentation on Monday, Ms. Garrett acknowledged how much the Eastlands had cared for the campers. But she said a culture of “obedience” to the camp’s late director, Dick Eastland, pervaded the camp, where counselors felt like they could not speak up and leaders dismissed concerns.
The Eastlands were running the camp “like something from 1965,” she said. “Nothing had changed in decades.”
Mr. Eastland died in the flooding while attempting to rescue campers.
This month, Mr. Eastland’s son Edward testified during a court hearing in a lawsuit against the camp that he did not see the flood warnings and did not meet with staff beforehand to plan. Edward Eastland, who worked at the camp alongside his father, was part of the rescue effort on July 4.
At the start of Monday’s hearing, one of the state senators on the committee, Pete Flores, promised that lawmakers would act.
“One truth stands above all: We cannot change what happened, but we can change how we prepare for and respond to the next emergency,” Mr. Flores said. “This tragedy could have been prevented.”
The investigators were asked only to look at events at Camp Mystic. But Ms. Garrett, who also called the local and county response a failure, noted that members of the community have asked for a broader investigation. More than 100 people across several counties died in the floods that began July 4.
“It wasn’t just Mystic,” she said at the end of her presentation, adding that other camps had been “lucky” that nothing worse had happened to them.
Lauren McGaughy is the Texas politics correspondent for The New York Times, writing about the ways that policymakers in the second largest state are changing lives for their citizens and influencing American politics.
The post Texas Lawmakers to Question Camp Mystic’s Owners Over Deadly Flood appeared first on New York Times.
