Started a new thread to distinguish from the very appropriate concern for what happened.

For anyone following this, it is fixing to get very ugly for Mystic. Criminal charges are in play. The Eastlands are in very deep crap. Mixed feelings for me. But I desire justice for my family and the other families.

Can you elaborate more to someone that isn't as plugged in or connected to this event? Why are criminal charges being filed?

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Can you elaborate more to someone that isn't as plugged in or connected to this event? Why are criminal charges being filed?

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Abandonment by an Eastland who was the nurse/medical director. She evacuated her family and never checked on the campers. Abandonment of children is a felony.

And there are 800 campers who have signed up to go this summer. It is truly surreal. The Mystic groupies are a strong group.

Joining some Heavens 27 parents tomorrow for a benefit for Camp Blessing in Brenham. Pretty emotional week for sure.

Ducks4brkfast said:

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Joining some Heavens 27 parents tomorrow for a benefit for Camp Blessing in Brenham. Pretty emotional week for sure.

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Thank you.

dermdoc said:

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And there are 800 campers who have signed up to go this summer. It is truly surreal. The Mystic groupies are a strong group.

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Pride and money of the elite.

I have no idea who or what and Eastland is… owner of the camp?

Is the argument being made that more lives could have been saved had she not done that? I thought this was a 100 year flood that was a terrible tragedy but wasn't aware any discussion of criminal negligence or something more nefarious was at play.

Awful tragedy regardless…

Sure can understand how you feel.

dermdoc said:

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ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Can you elaborate more to someone that isn't as plugged in or connected to this event? Why are criminal charges being filed?

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Abandonment by an Eastland who was the nurse/medical director. She evacuated her family and never checked on the campers. Abandonment of children is a felony.

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Didn't the other Eastland die trying to save other campers though?

dermdoc said:

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ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Can you elaborate more to someone that isn't as plugged in or connected to this event? Why are criminal charges being filed?

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Abandonment by an Eastland who was the nurse/medical director. She evacuated her family and never checked on the campers. Abandonment of children is a felony.

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That's going to be a tough case to prove given the statute.

I hope they don't lose everything. I pray that this results in the camp and others like it remaining intact and viable but enacting real changes to how things are done to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Since this is anew thread are there any proceedings yet? Any docs that can be linked for those that are really interested in reading and following along somewhat real time?

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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I have no idea who or what and Eastland is… owner of the camp?

Is the argument being made that more lives could have been saved had she not done that? I thought this was a 100 year flood that was a terrible tragedy but wasn't aware any discussion of criminal negligence or something more nefarious was at play.

Awful tragedy regardless…

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Here's the Cliff's Notes: when you have pre-adolescent/ adolescent children under your care and supervision, your first and primary concern is their well-being and safety 24 hrs/day. Shelter in place was severe negligence in this case and cost lives. Building a cabin in a flood plain is negligent as well, regardless of frequency of occurrence.

Building in a flood plain is hardly negligent.
There are risks involved and insurance rates reflect that.
Words matter.

Building in a floodplain is not negligent. Happens every single day. Do you think beach houses are also negligent because of hurricane storm surge?

This topic should be moved to another board.

Hank the Grifter said:

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Building in a flood plain is hardly negligent.
There are risks involved and insurance rates reflect that.
Words matter.

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Continued thoughts and prayers to Dermdoc and his family. Terrible tragedy.

Building in the flood plain becomes an issue when you have a cabin full of 8-9 year old girl campers and 2 college age camp counselors living there during a very severe flash flood and the resulting 27 deaths. I would have expected numerous contingency plans and I would expect the staff to evacuate the children to high ground Before moving all of the Canoes at 1 am. The men, including maintenance staff and owners, were loading and moving the canoes during the storm reportedly. I understand the lightning and heavy rain made a decision to move difficult but that's what plans are for. Not sure if the camp had buses and a large building up high to help evacuate to.

I see a report of 750 campers at $7,000 each. That's 5.25 million per camp session. For many years. I would have expected numerous contingency plans and personnel ready to solve problems 24/7. And clearly more able bodied men were needed that night in addition to the security officer, owner, and regular maintenance workers.

There are no winners in this situation, legal battle, or frankly this thread....

How exactly will justice be served?

I grew up on the Guadalupe in Hunt. Graduated from Tom Moore HS in Ingram. I went "home" the Friday after July 4, 2025. I wasn't prepared for what I saw. This wasn't a 100 year flood (1987), this was a once in 500 year flood. My house sat about 3/4 of a mile from the river. The highway we use to drive to Hunt and Ingram sits about a mile from the river. Had I been in bed, and had a flood warning come across my phone telling me to get to high ground, I would have rolled over and gone back to bed. My house WAS high ground…..in 1987…..on Juiy 4, 2025, the house I grew up in and the only highway available to get people out of Hunt was completely underwater.

I'm sorry for everyone's loss, and the tragedy of that flood. However, this flood event and the deaths that it caused was not predictable or preventable. The damage, the speed and levels the river reached were not something I would have ever considered possible. I would have laughed had someone suggested that the river could reach the levels it did last Summer.

I'm not an attorney and I'm not in any way familiar with what is going on in terms of lawsuits with Camp Mystic. I do think it would be sad however, if Mystic was shut down completely.

This comparison is not the same. Hurricanes don't follow the same exact path every single time.
If every single hurricane that ever formed in the gulf followed one given path to hit the exact same spot along the coast ……and you had years of data that proved that….. then yes you are negligent for building something in that consistently given path.
A river does just that. The Guadalupe River valley was formed over thousands of years of the path of the Guadalupe eroding and forming it. The flood of 2025 happened sometime in the rivers history before. That was a given. It will happen again. That is a given as well.
It could happen again tomorrow, or this coming 4th of July again, or 80 years from now. Regardless we know it can happen.

JAW3336 said:

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How exactly will justice be served?

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The same way justice is always served in high profile cases.

Total financial ruin of one side by way of funneling all the money to the others.

Gunny456 said:

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So don't build stuff where it can….and if you….yes you're negligent.

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So every beach owner is negligent, including every town built near a beach.

All of New Orleans is negligent.

Anyone who builds in a valley or near a major river, i.e. the mississippi.

Got it.

I too grew up on the Guadalupe River. Lived there over 30 years. I'm an old and my family homesteaded on the Guadalupe in the mid 1800's. Family still owns land on the river.
All of the land along the Guadalupe in the hill country originally was all ranches with similar homesteading backgrounds.
If you research the locations of the original barns and ranch houses, few, were ever washed away in floods.
Many of those old immigrants around Kerrville, Spring Branch, New Braunfels…were from the Elbe River valley in Germany.
They had generations of experience of river life.
Upon settling in Texas along the Guadalupe they were very attuned to reading the land and where to build homes out of the harms way of river floods.
They didn't have maps with lines of 100 year or 500 year projected floods. They had the knowledge to read the land.
An example of that is this…. Right after the war my dad purchased a small piece of land on the Guadalupe from my then great grandfather. He picked a spot for the house that surveyed 49' above normal pool stage of the river.
My grandfather told him not to build the house there. He based that on the fact that one of his fields, even higher in elevation of the house sight, had sandy loam soil that my grandfather said was deposited by the river hundreds or thousands of years ago…..evidence that the river could indeed get that high.
Mind you the family had been there since the mid 1880's and had never witnessed the river even getting close to that high…but they knew….by looking at the land….that he definitely had been that high over time.
Against what my grandfather said, Dad built our home on that spot anyway.
Well in 1978 the Guadalupe had a catastrophic flood and our house got 3' of water through it and washed our entire barn away that was 8' lower in elevation of our house. It reached the same flood stage the next night as well.
The gauge by Spring Branch measured a little over 42' but at Rebecca Creek it was measured at 51'.
In Comparison the 2025 flood measured 35' feet at Spring Branch I believe.
Bottom line is that flood in 1978 was above the then marked 100 year flood plain.
However the old homestead house and barns were not even close to getting water to them.
Those old settlers definitely had the knowledge…..we should have learned from them.

If the land shows along a river evidence of flooding potential from years of past history….yes.

JAW3336 said:

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Gunny456 said:

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So don't build stuff where it can….and if you….yes you're negligent.

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So every beach owner is negligent, including every town built near a beach.

All of New Orleans is negligent.

Anyone who builds in a valley or near a major river, i.e. the mississippi.

Got it.

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What WE see as gross negligence, in relation to your comment, is really just risk tolerance.

Our opinion of negligence and the law's requirement to prove negligence is not the same.

I think we all agree that building your house on the beach and sending your 9 year old kid to a camp run by folks that aren't their parents situated on the banks of a flood plain carries above average risk of personal injury and property damage. If you go read the lawsuits, you can see the angle that the attorneys are going to use to attempt to prove gross negligence.

We have a big enough governement and too many regulations currently.

We don't need more.

We need to realize that there is risk in anything.

A child is probably 10 thousand times more likely to die on Texas roadways than at summer camp but we are willing to take that risk every day.

Bad things happen and yes many of them could be prevented but at what cost? Money, loss of freedoms, living in a bubble?

Let's change the scenario:

You're at one of those cabins. It's flooding. The water is 20' in elevation below the cabin. It's the worst lightning storm you have ever seen. Get on the loudspeaker anyways -- "everyone evacuate to higher ground"...everyone does that and lightning strikes a tree a group of girls is under. Tragic...the river never got any closer to those cabins. The guidance said to stay in place. A plaintiff's attorney is now asking you "why didn't you follow the plan and leave everyone in place? The water had never in history reached that cabin!! What were you thinking? FEMA says to stay in place, and your Texas-approved plan said the same." This is essentially the testimony of Glenn, the hero we all talked about on this board.

These legal proceedings have gotten very personal, and the attacks on the Eastlands have gone too far. They are not evil people. Yes, they made mistakes and will forever pay as they go to sleep each night for the rest of their lives.

I do not intend for any of the above to reflect a lack of sorrow for anyone who lost a loved one. This was a tragic event, and I cannot fathom their pain.

Those wanting criminal charges to stick in this case are going to be sorely disappointed.

Quote:

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I'm sorry for everyone's loss, and the tragedy of that flood. However, this flood event and the deaths that it caused was not predictable or preventable.

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This is where the argument falls apart. A flood of that size should have been in the contingency plan for the camp because it had happened multiple times in recent history including:

• 1987 - 10 campers died at a location very close to the Mystic due to similarly intense rain and flooding
• 1988 - 2 campers died in the region due to flash floods
• 1978 - Camp Mystic itself had an August storm that completely flooded its cabins and the dining hall

And it was preventable because many camps, citing these events, built much more robust flood plans and safely evacuated their camps when the poor kids at Mystic died.

This does not delve into the many policies put in place by the Camp management that actually made things much worse.

This. It's factual that the Guadalupe, within its history, has got even higher than it did in this tragic event. When will happen ? Could be tomorrow…could be in 100 years.
But it's known it can. Designations of "100" year or "500" year floods are misleading and
create false sense of security.
In 1978 the Guadalupe exceeded 100 year floods twice in two days.
The camps are great things and great for the kids.
No need to do away with the camps…. Just move sleeping quarters a long ways from the river out of harms way.
Of course we will all be in trouble if that "40 days and 40 nights" rain event happens again.

I agree the 100/500 year concept is flawed.