When a reporter asked Texas Governor Greg Abbott who is to blame for the deaths of more than 100 people in this month’s catastrophic Guadalupe River flooding, Abbott scoffed. “Who’s to blame?” he said. “Know this: That’s the word choice of losers.”
The impulse to avoid blame—both placing and accepting it—is common after a disaster. Following school shootings, many political leaders suggest a variation on the idea that “now is the time to come together,” while asserting that anything other than unity might “politicize this tragedy.” After four people were killed last year at Apalachee High School in Georgia, for example, Governor Brian Kemp said, “Today is not the day for politics or policy.”
Perhaps this stems from a desire to protect the friends and families of the victims. I noticed this in my own interviews last week with camping experts. When I asked what they thought had gone wrong at Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors died, they dodged the question. “The loss of life is very tragic,” one camp insurer said, but “you got to think about all the kids that also made it as well.” A camp-health expert told me, “We don’t make any determinations or ideas around what happened, what didn’t happen.” To be fair, the details of what, exactly, happened are still unclear. Camp Mystic’s director, Dick Eastland, seemed aware of at least some potential for flooding, and decades ago approved a system of rain gauges to alert people during emergencies. Eastland himself died in the floods. After that kind of a loss, asking if the camp should have been better prepared might feel distasteful.
The camp did, however, make some decisions that in retrospect appear reckless. In 2019, it began a project to build new cabins, including some in a flood-risk area. The camp also failed to move several older cabins even though they were in a floodway, which, according to Kerr County officials, is “an extremely hazardous area due to the velocity of floodwaters.” (Camp Mystic did not reply to a request for comment.) The state and local governments, too, deserve scrutiny for the ways they did and did not act to protect Mystic campers and others in the flood zone.
Far from being inappropriate, now is the right time to ask questions, such as: Did camp officials follow the emergency plans with which the camp passed a state inspection two days before the flood? Why was there “little or no help” from authorities as the campers fended for themselves, wading through rising waters to higher ground? Why was an emergency alert called a CodeRED delayed for an hour after a firefighter in the area first asked for it to be sent? Why did Kerr County, which is in an area known as “Flash Flood Alley” and dotted with summer camps, including Mystic, struggle to install a flood-warning system after having considered such a project for years? Why did the state rebuff local officials when they tried? Why were so many people, at so many levels, seemingly unwilling to address the danger these children were in?
In a confusing, anguished time, gentle pabulum such as “come together” and “focus on the mourning” can feel safe and reassuring. And blame can be depressing; accepting responsibility for something that went terribly wrong is often painful and embarrassing. But the alternative is much worse: a world where the loss of innocent life is treated as inescapable, where no calamity can be prevented or bad situation reformed. Admitting that we can improve the world might be initially more uncomfortable, but it is also more hopeful.
Finding out who is responsible for a major failure matters, because identifying that failure can help prevent a next one. As Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, put it to reporters, “I think things should come out of this. It should be a lesson learned.”
Another word for blame is accountability, and accountability can motivate change. After 9/11, Richard Clarke, who had been national coordinator for counterterrorism leading up to and during the attacks, told families of the victims: “Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you”—an attitude that helped bring about efforts to improve national security. After a man opened fire on two mosques in New Zealand in 2019, killing 51 people, then–Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said she felt almost “complicit” because the nation’s laws had allowed the gunman to acquire his weapons legally. To her, it was the time for politics and policy: “I went to a press conference immediately after and said that our gun laws needed to change,” she told NPR recently.
Accountability was, I would bet, the goal of the reporter who questioned Abbott. Countless studies have shown that outcomes for citizens improve when members of the media ask probing questions of politicians. Press freedom correlates with less corruption in many countries. One study concluded that “how well any government functions hinges on how good citizens are at making their politicians accountable for their actions.” These levers of accountability compel a government to work for its people.
Of course, even if officials take responsibility, misfortune will continue to happen. Even with timelier warnings and cabins on higher ground, children still might have died in the Guadalupe flood. Yet as we come together, pray for the victims, and console their families, we should also try to understand what happened. Tragedy is part of life. But we should not invite more tragedies than are necessary by pretending we are powerless to stop them.
The post Who’s to Blame for the Camp Mystic Disaster? appeared first on The Atlantic.
