needed to make major revisions to its emergency plans<\/a> in order to receive a license to partially reopen in May in an area that did not flood.<\/p>\nState Senator Charles Perry told the Eastlands that the camp appeared to be \u201ccavalier\u201d and \u201cnonchalant\u201d in its approach to meeting the requirements for reopening, which resulted in multiple \u201cdeficiencies\u201d in its planning.<\/p>\n
The family may not \u201chave the privilege of running a business\u201d anymore, Mr. Perry said, adding that the Eastlands would not be able to run Camp Mystic in the future \u201cif I can have anything to say with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf y\u2019all are left as an operator in any form or fashion, what deterrent does that send to another operator that I can have kids die on my watch and still be an operator?\u201d Mr. Perry said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re willing to take a step back if camp can go on,\u201d said Edward Eastland\u2019s wife, Mary Liz, who also helps run Camp Mystic, speaking later in the hearing. \u201cWe\u2019re willing to step back.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s hearing followed a presentation on Monday of a report from the legislative investigators that found Camp Mystic\u2019s procedures included only emergency shelter plans and did not include instructions on how to evacuate during a disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cSheltering in place is the right thing to do under certain circumstances,\u201d 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. \u201cThere was not an evacuation plan for when sheltering in place was no longer viable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Garrett also said there had been inadequate training on the emergency plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cCampers were not instructed,\u201d she said. \u201cNo specific assignments were given to staff or counselors.\u201d<\/p>\n
In harrowing detail, she described how the lack of preparation and poor communication contributed to the \u201cmayhem\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The camp did not provide a statement on Monday in response to the investigators\u2019 report. Last week, a spokesman said the camp\u2019s owners planned to adjust their emergency plans to meet new, more stringent state requirements, and that they still intended to reopen on May 30.<\/p>\n
In her presentation on Monday, Ms. Garrett acknowledged how much the Eastlands had cared for the campers. But she said a culture of \u201cobedience\u201d to the camp\u2019s late director, Dick Eastland, pervaded the camp, where counselors felt as if they could not speak up and leaders dismissed concerns.<\/p>\n
The Eastlands were running the camp \u201clike something from 1965,\u201d she said. \u201cNothing had changed in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Eastland died in the flooding while attempting to rescue campers.<\/p>\n
At the start of Monday\u2019s hearing, one of the state senators on the committee, Pete Flores, promised that lawmakers would act.<\/p>\n
The investigators were asked to look only 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just Mystic,\u201d she said at the end of her presentation, adding that other camps had been \u201clucky\u201d that nothing worse had happened to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Owners and employees of Camp Mystic faced pointed questions Tuesday from Texas lawmakers investigating their handling of catastrophic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13247,13249,13250,6161,8,9,13251,13246,13248,360,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-21778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-camp-mystic-hunt","9":"tag-eastland","10":"tag-edward-1984","11":"tag-floods","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-richard-dick-1954-2025","15":"tag-summer-camps","16":"tag-tex","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116483354976859747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}