The leaders of Camp Mystic exhibited a "complacent" attitude toward flooding prior to last July's deluge that resulted in the deaths of 28 people at the historic Christian girls' summer camp, an investigator told state lawmakers on Monday.
"It was just part of life there," Casey Garrett said at a joint hearing of two legislative committees tasked with investigating the flood.
That's despite the camp's owners, members of the Eastland family, being familiar with the danger flooding posed to the area, she said.
Garrett, who conducted more than 140 interviews, described hearing how some campers staying in an area called Senior Hill would have food delivered to their cabins when the land bridge connecting them to the rest of the camp became inundated with floodwater from nearby Cypress Creek.
"Many people in this room told me ... 'We liked it because we could stay in our cabins and have food delivered to us by boat,'" Garrett said. "It was novel. It was part of camp lore."
That attitude, she told lawmakers, ultimately proved to be deadly.
"[The Eastlands] are loving, Christian people. Unfortunately, they were running a multi-million dollar, for-profit business like ... something from 1965," Garrett said. "These people did not want this to happen. They are good people that cared about these girls and these families, but nothing had changed in decades."
She said the camp's counselors, most of whom were college-age and responsible for caring for children as young as 8 years old, lacked emergency training. They also lacked access to radios, walkie-talkies, phones, tool kits, ladders or life jackets.
"Unfortunately, every single person that I've spoken with that are former counselors, current counselors — there was never any real training. There were never drills, no drills of any kind," she said.
The camp also lacked a written evacuation plan for campers and counselors to follow in the event of a flood, Garrett said.
State Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican who authored the Heaven's 27 Camp Safety Act, said he believes Camp Mystic is not the only summer camp to adopt a complacent attitude toward flooding.
"Camp Mystic just happened to be the unlucky one," he said. "I think every camp, every camp has fallen into this human nature of complacency."
Lawmakers are expected to hear more testimony about the deadly July 4 flood at Camp Mystic on Tuesday.
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