have been better swimmers.

Even in my rube state when a big storm is coming with the potential of flooding, they block roads, parks, campsites, etc.

a few years back... apparently no one woke up Sheriff Buford T Justice from sleep to tell him about the NWS Emergency Alert

What a joke.

(Or something like that). The MAGA are scared of losing the voters they have in the last month. Popularity is down to 40%.

Now Noem is a socialist.

this an unreliable DEI hire.

They needed to evacuate, not be prevented from coming in.

Or there would have been more casualties. The owner of an adjacent kids camp had campers do to arrive. She was swept away in flood. One family bringing their daughter to camp had their vehicle swept off the bridge into the water.

I would guess that they have had flooding before.

Look at the stuff built on stilts over cliffs, and as close to the shore as possible. Its a chance they take.

This one was absolutely horrible mostly because the kids had no clue and no choice. Or chance.

As in never. As an expert said on CNN there have now been five so called hundred year floods in said area, the last in 1987.

once credible warnings were received.

That said, I feel that the state bears significant responsibility for ALLOWING them to operate as they did, apparently either oblivious to warnings that were issued, or unprepared to react.

There are many at fault here. It won't bring back the lost, but perhaps some changes could be made to save lives in the future.

And every few decades before that. So this river flooding is well known.

The real question is why these camps were licensed and allowed to operate in the flash flood zone after what happened in 1987.

Probably comes down to $$$ and good old boys. Damn gubment isn't going to tell them what to do.

The 2 cabins closest to the river had for yrs been the cabins for the eight year olds. Why put the youngest kids closest to the river?

Many camps were between campers. Kids were due to arrive in a day or two. The owner of one of these camps was swept away so it could have been much worse.

And that area is prone to flash flooding with the ravines. A once in a thousand years occurrence yet someone has to be blamed. That girls’ camp isn’t the only camp, campsite or RV site..that whole area is very popular with people but so many missing young girls makes it even more tragic

They sure do.

and even that is inaccurate. There have been 5 such floods in the last 100 years, the most recent in 1987 - washing away a camp bus and van as they were trying to evacuate.

“The Guadalupe River has a history of destructive flooding due to its location in the Texas Hill Country, where steep topography and rocky soil lead to rapid runoff. Other notable floods include the 1987 event, which killed 10 teenagers, and earlier floods in 1998, 2002, and 2015.”

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220461156

No cell signal, no phones, no internet.

They were completely cut off from any external warning.

...which is a dumb-ass policy. It's a "Christian" camp. I'll bet that policy will change for next time, if there is one, at least for managers or supervisors. Someone should be monitoring weather through the night. But even with someone paying attention, the waters rose so fast, they might not have been able to get everyone to safety.

From Google AI:
Camp Mystic in Texas has a strict no-wifi policy for campers. They do not allow campers to bring any electronic devices that have WiFi capabilities, touch screens, cameras, video or gaming features. This includes:
Cell phones (even with SIM cards removed)
iPod touches
iPads
Apple watches or other smartwatches
Digital cameras or video cameras (including Go-Pros)
eReaders like Kindles or Nooks
Acceptable electronic devices are limited to devices that only play music, such as inexpensive MP3 players or older generation iPods without touch screens, and CD players. Disposable cameras are also allowed.
The rationale behind this policy is to encourage campers to unplug and be fully present in the camp experience. This helps prevent the loss or damage of valuable electronics and fosters a more immersive camp environment, allowing campers to live "in the moment".
While staff members are permitted to have electronic devices, they are only allowed to use them during their personal time and not in the presence of campers. The general rule is: "if it connects to wifi, it's not good for camp!"
For campers traveling with electronic devices to and from camp, they are required to turn them in to counselors upon arrival. These devices, along with other valuables like travel documents and money, will be stored in a safe in the camp office until departure.

What if the "guy with the satellite phone" was sleeping?

Or WHO in the real world was supposed to call him on the phone to warn them?

The Texas Lege is meeting in the next week or two for a special session. This would be a good venue to bring up situations like this, but I'm betting the lege will be consumed with redistricting Congressional districts to ensure no dirty Dems ever win again in Texas. Gov. Abbott wants better gerrymandering. I bet the sense of tragic urgency will have passed by then.

https://russblib.blogspot.com

Is busy in this special session focusing on redistricting and trying for another hemp ban. Before this is all over, Abbott and co. will just say the flooding and deaths were an unforseeable act of God.

…and, if they knew they didn’t, why didn’t law enforcement send a patrol car up to warn them?

of why no one knew to evacuate. Campers had no phones. Counselors likely couldn't access phones due to restrictions. If camp directors were the only ones with phones, were they awake and monitoring the weather as they should have been, given all the flood warnings that had been issued, not just overnight, but starting that previous afternoon?

Yes, part of the problem is that in Texas we get lots of tornado warnings and flood warnings, and it doesn't always apply to you even if it is in your localized area. A tornado close to me might be moving in the other direction (this has happened to me--we still obviously took cover.) My phone was going off all day yesterday with multiple flood warnings for my area, but because my house is not in a flood plain, I was okay.

So the directors may have thought that this warning wasn't worth the trouble of evacuating camp because 999 times before, even if the river flooded some, they were okay. And maybe they missed the water rising in the night when it really began rising so rapidly because it was so dark and the only people down at the lower cabins were counselors and cabins without phones to warn them. But this is obviously irresponsible if you are in charge of children, when you have to by hyper vigilant.

Same spot. Knit washed away.

The river has been and the region in drought. The river rose 30 foot in one hour. Just under 13 foot in 15 minutes.
The forecast was not even close to being accurate and the warning were general over wide areas.

Remember Uvalde. Shooting, well Uvalde is in the same area of Texas as the catastrophic flooding. Both emergencies could have been mitigated if local agencies had acted! The area also happens to be a big trump supporters area. No one had critical thinking skills and made a damn decision. Shame on my fellow Texans for allowing so many children to perish needlessly?

About the same distance it is to Austin, whose county voted nearly 70% for Harris.

So yeah.

Camp Mystic is further north and closer to Kerrville.

I had to do research because I’d just read about Frio River. It was given to HE Butt who owns HEB grocery stores.

I was excited to go there and found out it is dedicated to christian children and therefore I wouldn’t be allowed to explore the area.

https://www.foundationcamp.org/

https://www.google.com/maps/place/29%C2%B051'01.5%22N+99%C2%B040'14.9%22W/@29.8481863,-99.6798716,2856m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d29.8504167!4d-99.6708056?hl=en&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDYzMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The entire idea that they sent alerts in the middle of the night doesn’t matter if they didn’t set off the alarms on people’s phones. Did they send that type of message? If not, why not?

Also, what exactly did the warnings say?

But this came so fast and hard no one could possibly know how bad it was gonna be. Plus, this happened long after most people are asleep so I believe you’re right..unless people have notifications on their devices, they would not have known until too late. Now, after the flood, there’s warnings about bridges out, dams collapsing and roads closed. Up there in the Hill Country, I wonder what kind of cell service they have so they even could get notifications..

We rented air bnb near that area. No cell service. The owners had a land line.

did that camp even have one of those?

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/05/texas-hill-country-floods-warning-forecast-nws/

...

The forecast began to look ominous in Texas Hill County on Thursday afternoon.

A flood watch was issued by the National Weather Service at 1:18 p.m. that predicted up to 7 inches of isolated rainfall early Friday morning in South Central Texas, including Kerr County.

By the time the sun rose on the Fourth of July, less than 24 hours later, as much as 12 inches of rain had fallen in parts of the region while its residents were asleep, according to NWS radar estimates. The Guadalupe River gauge at the unincorporated community of Hunt, where the river forks, recorded a 22-foot rise in just two hours, said Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the NWS Austin/San Antonio office. The gauge recorded a level of 29 ½ feet before becoming completely submerged and failing, Fogarty added.

...

Rain began to fall around midnight, and the first flash flood warning was issued by the NWS at 1:14 a.m. Friday, Fogarty said. That warning should have triggered a response by local emergency management and local media to spread the word to those in harm's way, as well as the Emergency Alert System that broadcasts warnings to televisions and radios, Fogarty said.

All NWS flash flood warnings, including the one issued after midnight on Friday, trigger Wireless Emergency Alerts, the emergency push notification sent through cellphone towers to all wireless phones in the emergency area, Fogarty said. That warning was updated nine times throughout Friday, each of which triggered separate alerts through the Emergency Alert System and the Wireless Emergency Alerts, Fogarty said.

The most serious warning came at 4:03 a.m. when the NWS issued a flash flood emergency, warning of an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation” and urging immediate evacuations to higher ground. Flash flood emergencies are issued using a mixture of rainfall data and on-the-ground reports: “Someone has told us we need to get people out of here immediately or people are going to die,” Fogarty said.

...

We've rented over there b4. Had to drive five miles to get service

And since there was bad weather in the area the whole day before and flood warnings issued the previous afternoon, if they wouldn't have had someone awake overnight monitoring.

I'm wondering if one thing that may come out of this is regulation changes i.e. requiring that any camps must have an adult awake or a weather radio on if any alerts have been issued in the area.

Others have mentioned that because Central Texas gets so many tornado and flood warnings and most of the time, even if you are in the area impacted, they don't actually impact you, there's a lot of "warning fatigue" to all the alerts going off on your phone (constant amber alerts, silver alerts, etc). And perhaps even if they did get the alerts, they ignored them.

many still turn those off at night

they were calm under pressure

they followed texas procedure

they asked God what would the Governor do

No phones, cell service or internet...

No way to receive warnings.

You'd think the camp leader would have at least had a satellite phone on him.

to the slight annoyance of the person’s family .

fortunately i was able to assist with the culinary arts

but still too many turn those off because they off for everything unless you program them to only go off for warnings

the warnings. In Florida we have the alarms that go off on our phones. Hard to miss.

The previous evening the NWS and Accuweather both issued Flash Flood WATCHes

The camp in question is "technology free" and has no phones, no cell service and no internet...

Did the Camp director have a satellite phone? And who would have called him?

we had the police come to our condo parking lots and bullhorned us out of the buildings.

Someone needed a satellite phone with someone responsible for watching weather not at the camp.

Would have been an issue in Florida. At least, not before Trump. Not sure now.

This area is full of camps and camping areas as it's a very popular river destination. The front office has phones that went down once the flooding started.

I saw an interview with a young girl who said no cell service...

??? Probably.

You'd think they would have a couple of people who would be up all night for emergencies, etc. You would also think they would be in charge of monitoring for weather and other situations.

how many people are awake to gather and warn others to evacuate so many people?

Heard or heeded the warning?

https://accounts.waterdata.usgs.gov/wateralert/my-alerts/
https://waterdata.usgs.gov/explore/#mapCenter=29.90494852052797,-99.33837890625001&dataCollections=continuous&mapZoomLevel=9

If you check out the USGS map on the Guadalupe River, there are ten streamflow monitoring stations between the headwaters and Canyon Lake (reservoir). It is likely that some or all of these stations had the capability to send automated emergency alert messages once the river reached bank full or some parameter set by the user. Maybe it would not have mattered much since the water levels rose so quickly that bank full and flooding occurred simultaneously. But this is an actual measurement from the stream, rather than a rainfall gauge (the NWS hydrologists were undoubtedly monitoring these stream-flow staff gauges). There are so many stream-flow monitoring sites in the Guadalupe River and nearby rivers that a warning system would be necessary to ferret out the most severe situations.

It is hard to know if the USGS alert system is working properly since I cannot access it (maybe someone else knows if it still works). It is possible that in the hatchet job DOGE did on the federal websites and the Interior Department workforce, they may have broken critical parts of the warning system.

Unfortunately, the sad reality of this situation is that some missing people may never be found. They may be buried under gravel, boulders or sediment moved by this huge storm event. Having worked with rivers for years, it is amazing how much sediment and gravel can move in a single event. As part of our agency’s work on water quality, I had projects where there were temperature and chloride probes disappeared under feet of sediment from a single storm. Even huge boulders that seem immovable can travel long distances with enough stream-flow velocity.