State inspection two days before deadly floods found Camp Mystic had emergency plan in place
Caroline Cutrona, a Camp Mystic counselor, told CNN that a power outage around 4 a.m. that morning meant that the camp’s loudspeaker public address system wasn’t working, and that she never received cell phone alerts about the flash flooding because counselors and campers weren’t allowed to keep their phones with them.
It’s unclear whether the camp’s emergency plan accounted for the communication breakdowns.
Some of the cabins campers were staying in are located in the Guadalupe River’s “regulatory floodways” – the areas that flood first and are most dangerous – according to federal flood maps. Other cabins are located in an area that the federal government has determined has a 1% chance of flooding each year.
But the Texas regulations for youth camps don’t say anything about flood zones, and the state records don’t show the annual inspections of Camp Mystic taking that into account.
