many here have valid points from both sides. I'll preface by saying I am biased in this situation in that one of our close friends had a girl who died at Mystic.

I think the biggest takeaways from the coming lawsuits will be that Mystic was completely unprepared for the situation. Any type of plan is better than no plan at all. Knowing you have cabins on the river the safety plan in it's complete entirety was basically "shelter in place" until told otherwise. Well thats fine and dandy if you only have one cabin at a camp, but with the number of cabins and campers that doesn't fly. IMO the biggest problem they had that night was the inability to communicate with campers/counselors/adults etc. The no phone policy and lack of walkie talkies, etc was deadly for them. There should never be a situation where you have college aged girls having to make life or death decisions at a summer camp when it comes to an event like flooding, especially considering you're next to a river.


One thing to keep in mind is many of these parents, families, etc have deep political connections not just in TX, but in the entire USA and deep pocket books. Will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.

The actual reference to damage is behind a paywall in a NY Times Article but here is the link. After looking at it a second time, it looks like the 1932 flood was referenced as destroying cabins built in the same zone while saying the dining hall was flooded in 1978.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/us/camp-mystic-texas-floods.html

Quote:

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Floods were part of life at Mystic from the start. In 1932, water rose into the dining hall, and cabins built even closer to the waterfront than the current array were washed away, according to the book. In 1978, flash foods again swept down the Guadalupe, this time broaching the dining hall.

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Other references to 1978

https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/texas-1978-storm-lessons-2025-camp-mystic-flood-20766855.php

Quote:

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The National Guard was mobilized. Army helicopters airlifted stranded vacationers to safety. The banks of the Guadalupe were strewn with toppled trees and overturned cars. Summer camps were evacuated, and the Associated Press reported that Kerrville "resembled a war zone."

This isn't a description of the deadly July Fourth flash foods in Central Texas, which killed more than 100 people. Nor does it refer to the historic Hill Country flooding of July 1987, which has been much-cited lately as an earlier example of the Guadalupe River's destructive power.

No, the desperate scene depicted above is from the Texas floods of August 1978, a less-remembered weather calamity that bears an eerie resemblance to those of 1987 and 2025.

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https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/11/us/camp-mystic-owner-warnings-texas-flooding-invs

Quote:

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In 1978, an article in the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported that Camp Mystic was "the most severely damaged" of local summer camps affected by a flood that year. A separate article reported that five Camp Mystic counselors "had their automobiles swept into the Guadalupe River" by flood waters that year.

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https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/18/us/camp-mystic-texas-floods-lawsuit

Quote:

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Long before the morning of July 4, Camp Mystic's owners knew how powerful and dangerous the Guadalupe River was, the lawsuits allege.

The camp's history of flooding is long and deadly, with major inundations in 1932, 1978 and 1984, and the flooding of a nearby camp in 1987, Peck family lawsuit said.

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No one should say the type of event that hit the camp last summer was unpredictable.

I was tracking the flooding in the dining hall in 1978 was very minimal…like touching the back corner. 2025 had probably 8 feet of water in the dining hall.

Gunny456 said:

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

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I don't get the logic on hurricanes not being applicable here.

A river system is not "guaranteed" to repeat a specific flood in a deterministic way any more than a hurricane is guaranteed to follow a specific track. Both are simply governed by probabilistic processes.

The Guadalupe River valley was formed over geologic time from repeated flow events, but that doesn't mean a specific magnitude event (like a 100-year or 500-year flood) is inevitable on any defined timeline. It means there is a statistical probability of exceedance in any given year. A 1% annual chance event can occur in back to back years, or not occur for centuries.

Same concept applies to hurricanes. While individual storm tracks vary, the coastal regions they impact are absolutely subject to repeat probabilistic risk (storm surge, rainfall, etc.). In that sense, both river flooding and hurricanes are analyzed using frequency based methods and not certainty.

Where the distinction does matter is spatial predictability:
River flooding has well defined floodplains based on topography and hydraulics (mapped via FEMA, HEC-RAS, etc.)
Hurricane impacts are broader and less spatially precise, but still modeled probabilistically (surge zones, etc). The only real argument /difference you can make is you are never really blindsided by a hurricane in the middle of the night.

From an engineering standpoint (did H&H modeling for 5 years), the correct framework is not "it will happen again, so don't build there," but rather…

What is the annual probability of exceedance?
What level of risk is acceptable (1%, 0.2%, etc.)?
What is the structure elevation relative to BFE/freeboard?

Building in a floodplain is not inherently negligent, it's done all the time, as well as the coast with these variables considered.

So the issue isn't certainty vs uncertainty, it's whether the known probabilistic risk was understood.

Would there still be lawsuits if there was a waiver signed to attend the came with the exceedance disclosed? Could see that arising out of this possibly? Would that still be negligence?

But it was NOT predictable.

You cannot in any capacity calculate the odds of a flood of this magnitude because you don't know all of the information until after it happens. You would have no way of knowing that the cell generating the amount of rainfall was camped out in PRECISELY the right spot in the hill country for the perfect amount of time to create and nearly impossible situation. If it had done that 7 miles north or south, this is a nothing burger.

This is preventable 100% of the time if you evacuate every single a flood watch goes out. If that is the point you are making, then you can say that and that's totally true.

You are not talking about predicting. You are talking about calculating the odds, at night, in the dark, with limited information, and time not on your side, while weighing risk of moving small children.

I think people tend to focus on the decision to 'save the children'. But this was not the decision. The decision that needed to be made was one of risking lives unnecessarily. They were weighing the risk of moving them and potentially killing them for nothing against a threat that may or may not come to pass. By the time that was made clear, it was too little too late.

Such is the conundrum of the Monday Morning Quarterback. Decisions are EASY to make when you have 100% of the variables accounted for and the sun is shining bright.

Humans make decisions based on emotion. Always. Every single time. Almost all of our decisions are based on what we KNOW to be true as we have experienced. It's a bias built into us. Even decisions we think are data based are ultimately distilled to emotional responses.

If they had moved those girls, and 6 of them drowned and the flood didn't worsen, then that would have also been a bad decision.

That already happened on another forum here.

You wrote an awful long post and apparently missed my point entirely. The Fact remains…. All hurricanes don't hit the same spot every time along the gulf…..however…. When the Guadalupe floods again…and it will …..it's going to flood within the Guadalupe River valley…every, single, time.
You can own a beach house at Key Allegro and there can be five hurricanes on the coast and you may not be affected by any of them.
However if you own land along the upper Guadalupe River valley and there is a flood….it is a given you are going to be affected by it.
The FEMA maps and hydrological studies of what the floodplains are, are flawed. Mother Nature has already proved that multiple times.
As I said in another post. My family homesteaded a ranch on the banks of the Upper Guadalupe in the 1800's. I lived on part of that land for 30 years and still have family members there. We all would have loved to have had cabins closer to the river…..but we didn't build them there cause we knew the river could potentially get very high and wash everything away….even though no one had ever seen it get that high since the 1800's.
I can't even remember or count how many floods I witnessed living on the river all those years. But I was there in 1978 and witnessed it.
Many years later when we would tell folks how high the water had been they thought we were smoking crack.
I suspect some old timers probably told folks long ago how high the river got where all those camps are now and everyone thought they were nuts as well.

This logic just doesn't make sense. That was the point of my post.

The whole situation is beyond tragic and sad. People, good people, experienced losses they'll never recover from. I can't however see it being "justice" to further ruin lives of people who experienced that same loss or removing an institution that does good from existing.

Our society needs more Camp Mystics, not less. It is also easy for me to hold this opinion having not felt the loss.

Your logic makes more sense if it was that while a hurricane may come ashore, it won't necessarily wash away your house if you don't take a direct hit and you get a minor hurricane. Likewise with the Guadalupe, not every rain event in the watershed is going to cause a catastrophic flood. And just like the Guadalupe River has been there for thousands of years, hurricanes have existed in the Gulf for thousands of years as well. The difference with a river is that based on the mapping and existing geology, we can get a good idea of if a particular area has flooded. Can't do that as easily with a hurricane.

Yes sir. That's exactly the point I was trying to make.
Having lived on the river for many years and with a long history with my family on the river it is so sad and tragic this happened.
We were way downstream by Spring Branch but I had cousins and relatives that were from families that had homestead in the river by Hunt and Comfort. My grandfather told us stories about how bad it could flood there.
During college days I worked during the summer for a company that sold cleaning supplies to all the camps. I called on camp Waldemar, Mystic, Camp Capers, and the Boy Scout camp all in that area.
I remember thinking…."holy moly if the Guadalupe ever floods as bad here as it does down at our place, it's going to wash these camps away."
They are great places…..and good for the kids.
It would be bad to have them go away for sure. However, maybe move their buildings way up high and don't have kids sleeping in harms way.
Floods are going to happen again….potentially even worse. As I said in my other post, it could happen again tomorrow, next 4th of July, or 80 years from now. We should learn from it, and for the future kids sakes move their buildings to higher ground.
I would rather see all those camps owners spend money on accomplishing that rather than giving all their money to attorneys. But that's just me.

I'm not an attorney, hydrologist, engineer and probably not qualified in any way here. Do the parents that sent their children to an area known to be in the flood plain and with a history of flooding including previous fatal incidents not have any liability?

Have you ever been to Mystic? There are trees everywhere. I didn't say a rally point would be under a tree. But the threat of a lightning strike is real when moving that many people in a heavy storm.

It's not an analogy… it was the actual risk trade-off decision that had to be made under uncertainty.

jja79 said:

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I'm not an attorney, hydrologist, engineer and probably not qualified in any way here. Do the parents that sent their children to an area known to be in the flood plain and with a history of flooding including previous fatal incidents not have any liability?

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There are legal theories about "assumption of the risk" that may or may not be involved here, depending on the causes of action alleged. It has been a long time since I researched that defense so I don't even know what the elements are of it.

There are really 2 things that I'm keyed on in all of this, one thing has either happened/didn't happen and the other will almost certainly happen. The first is if these camps didn't have signed releases from the parents, well they've just dug their own grave and put nails in their own coffin. It isn't that I don't have some sympathy but I'm like, where was your legal counsel and/or why weren't you using it?

The second is that, as elected judges, the trial court judges are not going to let these cases get away from the Plaintiffs. They can't afford to be known as the judge who's court denied relief to these parents/family members on what "had to have been" complete and utter gross negligence (whether it actually was or not). Every ruling is going to cut in favor of the Plaintiffs and I don't even think the SA court of appeals (or Austin, if it goes there) is going to disrupt any ruling or jury verdict. These cases are going one way and one way only.

The bottom line in this incident is that the owners of Mystic believed that being outside of the 100 year flood plain meant being safe from flooding. Their meager response plan to shelter in place in cabins and the dining hall because they were above the 100 yr floodplain was flawed from the beginning because it didn't account for what would happen if flooding was worse than a 100 yr flood. Not following their plan to have radios in every cabin prevented them from changing the plan when it became apparent the flooding was worse than planned for. Thats it. You can assign blame and penalties for their errors as you like, but the bottom line is that they made the (all too common) mistake of thinking that being above the 100 year flood plain made them safe from flooding, and they were not.

Complete lack of any semblance of a functional plan. Counselors with no means to communicate or be communicated to, and what little they got via shouting (stay put) was wrong. Thank God some ignored it or it would be more than 27

TxAG-010 said:

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

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Couldn't agree more.

Captain Winky said:

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Driving can be fatal. If I send my kid to school on the bus and it crashes and they die, am I partially liable? Do me, the school district, and the bus driver split the liability in thirds?

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Really bad analogy considering the testimony that played out earlier this week in Austin.

Captain Winky said:

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I have no idea what you're talking about.

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Did you watch any of the testimony in the temporary injunction hearing in Travis County District Court this week? If you or anyone else on this thread has not, I would suggest you do.

One of the girls that passed lives at my same address, just one street to the south. My girls knew her and my neighbor's daughter was one of her best friends.

I was okay with the defense of "act of God" and "1,000 year flood" at the time last summer and into the early part of the school year.

I thought the fall announcement of CMCL reopening in 2026 was tone deaf and incredibly bad PR strategy.

Fast forward to this past week: All the Eastland's own testimony on the stand shows they are in no way fit to re-open a camp this summer for numerous reasons, both emotionally and operationally.

I don't really follow your analogy. I'm just thinking people that lived in Texas knew the possibility in that area. I'm not absolving anyone of liability. I don't know what type plan would have worked in this catastropy.

It's hard to find legit and full links of these hearings, which pisses me off for what a high profile case it is.

I spent more than a 'quick search' amount of time to find them.

Nonetheless, I did find some which I will post.


Either way we shouldn't have to go to reddit or message boards to find these links.

Here they are for those that don't have the luxury of watching court tv all day long:

Day 1: Hour 1...I don't have this part and don't know where it is.

Day 1 a second 'piece'.:

Day 1 Part 2:

Day 2 Part 1:

Day 2 Part 2:

Day 3 I think in full: https://www.youtube.com/live/U5BFBOwCq5Y


I'll try to post links if I find better ones.

This is a good thread for discussion if it can remain civil and staff doesn't nuke it.

If anyone is so inclined, I encourage they watch these for the sake of discussion.