Abysmal Kerr County Goes After Camp Mystic

Kerr County is the local authority pursuing justice against the owners of Camp Mystic.  There could not be a more inappropriate government to undertake this effort given the County's nonresponse the evening of the disastrous July 4th flood.  

Kerr County did not drill for a flash flood disaster under the tenure of Emergency Management Coordinator William "Dub" Thomas and it did not evaluate its "response" to the deadly July 4th flash flood event. These are basic competencies in the disaster response world.

Kerr County's Assistant County Attorney responded to the public information request:

Kerr County has completed its search for records responsive to your request for the Sheriff’s Office, all County Commissioners, Information Technology, Road & Bridge, Engineering, and the County Attorney’s Office. 

After a diligent search of files, records, and information systems reasonably likely to contain responsive materials, these departments and/or department heads have no records responsive to your request.

For some reason Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas legislature are giving Kerr County officials a free pass, other than some initial public humiliation.  

Kerr County officials did not participate in State of Texas Emergency Management phone calls prior to the July 4th floods.  Numerous other Texas County Judges and Emergency Management Coordinators fulfilled their duties and took life saving actions prior to and during the flooding.  

If the local government's position is that Camp Mystic leaders should have been able to predict, then that also applies to Kerr County, which never got off its fallen face, but the state continues to cover for it.

If there ever were a case of legal malpractice, this is it.  Kerr County should be prosecuting itself or the State of Texas should lead legal accountability for Kerr County leaders who clearly abdicated their responsibilities to plan, drill, evaluate those drills, respond to an actual event and then evaluate that response.