Mystic Parents: Stories Far Worse than "Team Loss"

Parents of the children from Camp Mystic who died in the flash flooding spoke to Texas legislators.  Words like "preventable failures", "safety being paramount", "protocols ... not followed", "their deaths will mean change",  and many more.  

NYT reported:

“There needs to be better coordination with local first responders, because in an emergency, confusion kills, and we saw that on July 4.”

No one in the Kerr County Emergency Management hierarchy answered the phone calls from 911 emergency dispatch.  It's unclear if any deputies were sent to the homes of the parties involved.  There is far more left unsaid than revealed by elected officials and public servants.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott compared people asking questions about the disaster response to disgruntled football fans after a team loss.

Politics is an insufficient way to explain our world, given its ever shifting sands, serial mistruths and mind numbing double standards.  Governor Abbott's analogy should be taken in that context.  The State of Texas protected Kerr County officials for nearly a month after the event. 

 

The emergency management world knows Kerr County leaders failed in their duty to anticipate, act on timely information coming into 911 and issue the most urgent of warnings to people already in harm's way.  They failed to coordinate state assets pre-positioned in that area during the early hours of the event.

The parents of twenty seven children have to deal with the grievous loss of their child or children.  Those who survived face a lifetime of fear and PTSD from their trauma.

If emergency management people can't wake up and respond to a disaster, one which they've drilled on for years and warned the public about in expos, then the public needs to wake up.  

Update 8-22-25:  Texas Tribune reported:

“Make no mistake, House Bill 1 is fundamentally a bill about failure,” said Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, when he introduced it. “The camp failed these girls. The county failed them. The river authority failed them, and in a larger sense, their government.

Missing are the consequences for the people who failed to do their job, the one they were paid for.  The Texas Senate is in go-forward, clean-up mode.  The House has two measures in the works, one on disaster preparation for camps and the other for post disaster scams.  Isn't it a scam to take money to perform a job and then not do it?

Update 8-24-25:  Parents of the campers killed by flood waters met with Governor Abbott in the days before their testimony to the Texas legislature.

"Cile's life ended, not because of an unavoidable act of nature, but because of preventable failures..."

Failures for which their has been no public accountability to date, despite promises by Governor Coach Abbott to take action.

Update 9-6-25:  An Austin couple expressed their views on the flood that took their daughter's life at Camp Mystic:

“When something is 100 percent preventable, it’s just awful and it’s very sad,” he (father) added. “And, so, I have a very hard time calling this a tragedy. Because, in my mind, it was 100 percent preventable.”

Update 10-15-25:  The Texas Legislature will establish two more committees to look at the deadly flash flood event of July 4. 

Update 12-6-25:  The 911 calls to Kerrville Emergency Dispatch were made public.  The calls reveal increasing desperation and peril.  The calls from the 911 center to Emergency Management Officials are yet to be released.  

Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator Dub Thomas had been on medical leave after heart surgery but returned to work on November 10th.  Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly is looking to hire help for Thomas.  The top three Kerr County officials continue to cover for each other and they are yet to produce/share an after action report.

Update 12-7-25:  Concho Valley Homepage ran the 911 call story.

Update 4-15-26:  A director of Camp Mystic testified that he:

"had not seen the official weather warnings before the storm, did not convene a staff meeting about the potential flooding and acknowledged that the camp did not have a detailed, written flood evacuation plan."

The cascade of ignorance and lack of preparation was widespread in Kerr County.

Update 4-22-26:  KXAN reported: 

According to the House’s resolution, the committee would be tasked with investigating contributing factors, allocation of resources, effectiveness of preparedness and effectiveness of response and coordination between local, state and federal entities. The Senate’s resolution called for a broader “complete and thorough examination of the facts and circumstances surrounding the flooding events.”

So how did this broad mandate get reduced to summer camps?   It appears there may never be an assessment of Kerr County emergency official's response (non-response) to the disaster.