Cici Williams Steward told a panel of Texas legislators on Wednesday of the moment she shared the news with her 5-year-old daughter just days before kindergarten was to start: her big sister, 8-year-old Cile, was not coming back from Camp Mystic.
“She needed to hear the unbearable truth from us, not from kids on the playground,” said Ms. Steward, the mother of the last camper still missing from a children’s sleep-away retreat devastated by the July 4 floods in Texas Hill Country.
“We are forced to pray for the day when our child’s body is found, and to call that good news,” she told committee members considering a new state law to strengthen safety protocols in camp sites and other flood prone areas. “My baby girl is still missing.”
Ms. Steward’s testimony marked the first time parents of the campers testified in a public forum since the floods that ravaged the Texas Hill Country, known for its summer camps, vacation homes, campsites and RV parks. And they offered lawmakers and emotional assessment of the region’s preparations for such a catastrophic flood.
“Training should prepare staff and campers to act, not to wait,” said Matthew Childress, whose camp-counselor daughter, Chloe, 18, died trying to protect young girls under her care. “There needs to be better coordination with local first responders, because in an emergency, confusion kills, and we saw that on July 4.”
Nearly all of Camp Mystic’s victims were confined to two cabins near the Guadalupe River, and more than a dozen parents of the victims recounted the moments they had to enter a morgue to identify their children’s bodies. They pleaded with members of a State Senate committee to approve legislation that would improve flood warning systems, bolster internet communication, improve training and supply rescue equipment such as ladders.
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The post Camp Mystic Parents Demand Changes Before More Children Are Lost appeared first on New York Times.
