Camp Mystic owner who died in flash flood spent decades fighting for new flood warning system.
“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way—saving the girls that he so loved and cared for”.
The owner of Camp Mystic not only died trying to save campers, but also spent decades of his life warning about the dangers of flooding along the Guadalupe River, recently advocating for new flood warning systems.
Camp Mystic is a summer camp located in Hunt, Texas that lost 27 people to the deadly flash floods on July 4. The camp’s owner, Dick Eastland, was hailed a hero for his attempt to save young camper’s lives during the tragedy.
After 10 children at a nearby camp were fatally swept away from a flood in 1987, Eastland advocated for a new flood warning system. More recently, he served on the board of the local river authority, supporting any efforts to improve flood warnings on the Guadalupe river, CNN reported. It comes as Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrived in Texas to visit the disaster site.
“The river is beautiful,” Eastland said to the Austin American-Statesman in 1990. “But you have to respect it.”
The floods killed 27 people at Camp Mystic
Now, the catastrophe serves as a reminder of the severe damage and tragedy floods could cause, prompting ideas for ways officials could be better prepared in the future.
“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way—saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,” Eastland’s grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram.
“Although he no longer walks this earth, his impact will never fade in the lives he touched.”
History of flood preparedness at Camp Mystic
The flood warning system that Eastland installed in the late 80’s eventually broke, leaving the river authority to shut it down in 1999, saying it was “unreliable with some of the system’s stations not reporting information”, according to the Kerrivlle Daily Times.
CNN reported that there were more attempts to implement new flood-monitoring systems, even some with warning sirens that could send out alerts, but those attempts never gained enough support, thanks to local opposition, a lack of support from the state and low budgets.
Multiple cabins at Camp Mystic were located in areas deemed high-risk by the federal government for inundations from the Guadalupe river, CNN detailed.
The camp built new cabins in less-risky areas, but nothing was done to move those cabins still in high-risk areas.
“Camp officials might have not been aware of flood risk when they first built the cabins,” said Anna Serra-Llobet, a University of California-Berkeley researcher who studies flood risk.
She added that the camp could have built cabins before flood maps were even created.
Nonetheless, Serra-Llobet said officials should have been aware that some cabins were in areas labelled a “severe hazard”.
Camp Mystic is an all-girls Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas(Image: The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Camp Mystic’s disaster plan approved days before deadly flood
Just two days before a devastating flood claimed the lives of over two dozen people at the all-girls Christian summer camp, Texas inspectors had approved the camp’s emergency plans, according to the Associated Press.
On Tuesday, the Department of State Health Services released records indicating that the camp had met numerous state regulations concerning “procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster.”
