Central Texas Floods, Camp Mystic, and Climate Change
First Take: News In Context. (Note: this post is being updated with new info and analysis.)
The central Texas floods in and around Kerrville have resulted in 133 deaths thus far, which surpasses the death toll from the historic inland flooding brought about by Hurricane Helene when western North Carolina was particularly hard hit. These central Texas floods are now the deadliest from rainfall in the US since 1976. Sadly, the death toll will continue to rise, as at least 170 are still missing. (See this Washington Post article providing brief bios of many of the children who perished. It will break your heart.)
Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for girls, lost 27 campers, counselors, and staff, with 10 girls and a counselor still unaccounted for. The cabins for the younger girls, or “littles” as they are called, were closest to the river, as little as 225 feet. All the girls from the other cabins further from the river survived. The camp’s director, Dick Eastland, perished trying to save some of the campers. One of the 18-year old counselors, Chloe Childress, also died attempting to save younger girls, while other teenage counselors were able to lead their “littles” to safety.
The century old Camp has seen many from prominent families over the years, including former First Lady Laura Bush, who was a counselor there while in college. LBJ and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson’s daughter’s and granddaughters also attended, some of whom also became counselors.
As Karen Tumulty reported in her column, “Parents were known to put their daughters on the waiting list at birth. … Girls in their cabins could look up and see the names of their mothers and aunts and grandmothers carved into the rafters.”
Here is how Camp Mystic describes its program on its website:
Established in 1926, Mystic is nestled among cypress, live oak, and pecan trees in the hill country of west-central Texas on the banks of the beautiful Guadalupe River. Mystic is located near the geographical center of Texas, 18 miles northwest of Kerrville. The staff at Mystic strives to provide young girls with a wholesome Christian atmosphere in which they can develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem.
Each summer, Mystic challenges its campers to meet the Mystic ideals:
Be a better person for being at Mystic
Let Mystic bring out the best in them
Grow spiritually
Campers develop life-long friendships with other campers and counselors.
This brief NYT video clip gives a heartbreaking sense of the fun the girls were having before, and the devastation wrought after.
“It was the camp of our dreams,” said Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, 81, daughter of LBJ and Lady Bird and former First Lady of Virginia . “It’s a hole in our hearts now. You just can’t believe that Camp Mystic and all of those girls are gone.”
Could Loss Have Been Avoided?
Given that the area is known as “Flash Flood Alley,” they should have been prepared. So how did this happen?
The Storms
As Bloomberg reported, drought set the stage to make these floods even worse:
Nearly 90% of Kerr County was in either extreme or exceptional drought — the two highest categories on the Drought Monitor’s five-step scale — prior to the storm.
The ground was so hard and the rain came so fast and intense that the precipitation just ran right off, more like concrete than porous soil.
An article in the Washington Post describes what happened with the storms:
the floods were the result of extraordinary atmospheric conditions that sent intense plumes of Gulf of Mexico moisture into parts of Texas long known to be vulnerable to flash flooding, when bursts of heavy rain caused water to rise rapidly.
And unlike a typical summer thunderstorm that can cause quick flooding, this system formed in a way that allowed it to stall, creating deluges that repeatedly poured several inches of rain on the same areas within a matter of hours … four months of rainfall came down in four hours.
Four months of rainfall came down in four hours.
While the area is prone to flooding, this was extraordinary. Again, from the W. Post:
“The flooding damage is catastrophic,” Kerrville Police Officer Jonathan Lamb told The Washington Post. “It’s the worst flood that we’ve ever seen.”
In total the waters rose 37.5 feet, one foot higher than it had ever done before. Perhaps the most danger was from the speed of the rise. Between 3:30am and 4:30am the Guadalupe River rose more than 12 feet, “rushing with 2,800 times the normal amount of water” according to a W. Post analysis.
This video shows flood waters rising over 20 feet in about 37 minutes. At Camp Mystic the waters rose over 4 feet at many of the cabins.
Areas in extreme drought before a huge storm, above average water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, a massive amount of rain whose size developed so quickly the National Weather Service misjudged how big it would be, and flooding like nothing the locals have ever experienced — these are the types of situations that climate change will bring.
In our new climate reality more and more “natural” disasters are no longer just natural. They are disasters that have been made worse by human-caused-climate change. The additional heat-trapping gasses since the Industrial Revolution have created more and more intensified floods and droughts. And in many cases the flooding is happening with lightening speed. Climate-altered weather patterns are making rainfall events both faster and bigger — and thus more dangerous and deadly.
Texas is especially vulnerable, as pointed out in the Bloomberg article by Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
“Texas is particularly flood-prone because the fever-hot Gulf of Mexico is right next door, providing plenty of tropical moisture to fuel storms when they come along.”
Bottom line: the speed and scale of the storms — what should now be expected from climate change — was outside the experience of those impacted.
In the aftermath some of the conspiracy-minded have touted bogus theories to avoid the truth, leading to death threats for those they falsely think are responsible. We must tell the truth and refute the lies.
Communications Failures
The National Weather Service, along with all other climate-related programs, has been gutted by the Trump Administration, with large numbers of retirements and firings. In the flooded area key positions are not filled, including those dealing with communications and coordination with local officials.
For example, as NYTimes columnist Zeynep Tufekci explained:
Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The NWS did issue warnings but they didn’t reach many of those who needed them, or were not put in proper context through personal communications between NWS staff and local officials.
At Camp Mystic the head of the camp, Dick Eastland, did not begin trying to evacuate campers until over an hour after receiving a text alert when young counselors had already begun to do what they could on their own.
Another factor was that the local area does not have an early warning system. As the NYTimes reported:
The rural county of a little over 50,000 people, in a part of Texas known as Flash Flood Alley, contemplated installing a flood warning system in 2017, but it was rejected as too expensive.
Additional reporting by the NYTimes revealed that the county sought financial help from the state three times between 2017-2024 but was rejected or not given an answer.
Camps and Cabins in Dangerous Areas
Camps want campers close to the river to provide a fuller sense of being in nature. At Camp Mystic, not only were the cabins for the younger girls in a flood-zone, they were in an even more dangerous area called a “floodway.” As the NYTimes reported, they
were so close to the river’s edge that they were considered part of the river’s “floodway” — a corridor of such extreme hazard that many states and counties ban or severely restrict construction there.
As one expert put it: “It’s like pitching a tent in the highway.”
Even as Camp Mystic implemented a recent $5 million construction project, it did not include moving these cabins. Instead, it built new buildings in other flood-risk areas.
Camp Mystic also requested at least three times over the years that FEMA alter its 100-year flood map to remove its buildings from that designation. FEMA did so in 2013, 2019, and 2020.
As reported by the AP:
Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA's flood map determinations, said it was "particularly disturbing" that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
"It's a mystery to me why they weren't taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone," she said.
A 2021 study by Pralle showed that FEMA granted more amendments to white, wealthy, well-connected grantees.
Even with these exemptions, at least 12 of Camp Mystic’s buildings were still in FEMA’s 100-year flood zone.
As one expert put it in an excellent article from the Washington Post:
“‘It’s just obvious that this is a place that should never have been built upon,’ said Oliver Wing, the chief scientific officer at Fathom, a water risk intelligence firm. ‘There should not be a single inhabited structure in a floodway. … It’s unforgivable what’s happened here.’”
If all of this weren’t bad enough, FEMA’s designations underestimate risk because they have not been updated to factor in heavy rainfall events that swell streams and creeks.
The adults and governments that were supposed to protect the girls failed them and left it to teen counselors to save their “littles.”
Simply put: the adults and institutions and governments that were supposed to protect the girls failed them and left it to teen counselors to save their “littles.”
Is Now the Time to Talk About Climate Change?
Is there a climate contribution (or signal) with these particular central Texas floods? Attribution studies are becoming more rapid. Hopefully we’ll know quickly.
But is this the right moment to be talking about climate change? When humanity has contributed to these faster, bigger, dangerous, and deadly storms, then yes it is, to be done so with sympathy and respect.
But is this the right moment to be talking about climate change? When humanity has contributed to these faster, bigger, dangerous, and deadly storms, then yes it is, to be done so with sympathy and respect.
People have grown tired of “thoughts and prayers” by those who don’t want to address underlying causes, and seek to silence those who do, saying “Now is not the time.”
Well, in the kairos-climate time in which we all exist, now is always the time to talk with appropriate sensitivity about climate change and what we must do to avoid future suffering. No one is exempt from climate risk.
Action Steps
We must all recognize that our past experience with the weather and climate can mislead us given the changes global warming is bringing about.
How should we respond to this heartbreaking loss of life so that future lives may be saved?
Cabins near flood-prone rivers are no longer safe, especially for young children. Camps must be redesigned with climate impacts in mind. It could be that some camps will need to be relocated altogether. FEMA must stop facilitating risk by granting so many exemptions, and must update their process to factor in how heavier participation events from climate change impact creeks and streams.
Local areas must invest in needed early warning systems. Federal and state governments must help with the funding to ensure that all Americans are treated equally when it comes to such risks.
The Trump Administration’s gutting of the National Weather Service and all climate-related programs must be reversed quickly, and their plans to make things even worse must be thwarted. Indeed, given the growing need, such programs must be strengthened and enhanced. In light of these floods, now is the time to press this case, and to keep on pushing until victory is won.
We must not only adapt to climate impacts, we also must address the underlying causes of human-induced climate change. Things are going to continue to get worse — but they will get much, much worse if we don’t significantly reduce climate pollution and keep away from dangerous tipping points and circumstances where we won’t be able to adapt. We must overcome climate change by keeping warming to 1.5C with minimal overshoot.
To achieve this we need the Climate Movement and Climate Action Supporters to continually push to make it happen. We must become big and broad and active enough so we can’t be suppressed, missed, or ignored.
Everyone concerned must join the Climate Movement or become a Climate Action Supporter.
As we carry out our action steps we must keep those who lost loved ones in our thoughts and prayers.
Where is the hope? It springs from the actions we take, which flows from the love we have for our children.
In keeping with our Better Future Assumption and Better Future Covenant, the adults affiliated with Camp Mystic and all of the parents of the campers wanted a better future for their girls. That’s what we want for all of today’s children and those yet to be born. Our work to overcome climate change brings honor to the memory of those we have lost.
Let’s all work together for the children. No child is exempt from the dangers posed by climate impacts.
Join us in the Climate Movement and help us become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world as we fulfill our Better Future Covenant.
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