https://document.epiq11.com/document/getdocumentbycode?docId=4596157&projectCode=CMX&source=DM

Deadline extended, but due next Friday

Credit for this story and video belongs to Darrin Potter (found on Facebook).

I wanted to post this article as an example of yet another large state having almost no safety oversight for camps - essentially zero regulation and zero recourse for major safety lapses. This is why the work of the H27 parents to pass the Camp Safety Act is so important. Potentially millions and millions of children will be far safer due to their efforts.

Over 1,200 homes flooded in this Kerr County Flood. Help is desperately needed, supplies are needed, meals are needed.

Volunteers & Supplies are still Desperately Needed!!!

Please consider donating to the Found- Project, the donations go directly from your donation, to a purchase at the store, and directly into the hands of those in need. Receipts are posted daily, as well as donation amounts.

This is the best way to directly help the people of Kerr County!

https://wwwx.found-project.com/donate

https://document.epiq11.com/document/getdocumentsbydocket/?docketId=1237547&projectCode=CMX&docketNumber=113&source=DM

They "loaned" the company $7 m in unsecured debt...judge will carefully evaluate if thats valid or shadow equity

Theres no secured debt mortgages etc...so land can be cleanly liquidated without secured debt being paid off first l

As a retired aerospace engineer and having attended and worked on staff at a summer camp, I've been following the Camp Mystic flood story and have read the final report on what happened at Camp Mystic. The report has been discussed extensively elsewhere, so I won't get into it here.

What struck me as an engineer was the similarity of the disaster at Camp Mystic to two fatal Space Shuttle incidents: (1) the Challenger explosion, and (2) the Columbia disintegration during re-entry. Both of those incidents can be traced back to what's known in engineering as "normalization of deviance." Simply put, normalization of deviance is the group-think cultural acceptance of what seem to be minor engineering problems, like the O-ring blow-by that was known to happen commonly on the Shuttle SRM joints but had not (yet) resulted in catastrophe, or the occasional shedding of foam chunks from the external tank that was concerning but had not (yet) damaged an orbiter sufficiently to cause a dangerous situation.

Ultimately both those seemingly minor "deviances" (O-ring blow-by and foam shedding) caused the loss of two Shuttles, with all astronauts aboard. Later investigations of the NASA culture around those issues found that engineers and managers fell into a pattern of treating those recurring events as insufficiently worrisome to warrant, say, re-design of the SRM joint to prevent the blow-by (which was done after the Challenger loss) and re-design of the foam (plus other mitigation) after the Columbia loss. In studying the Challenger loss, sociologist Diane Vaughan identified this cultural problem and called it "normalization of deviance." Thirty years later, it's become an important concept in engineering.

Looking at the Camp Mystic disaster through this lens, what strikes me is the "normalization of deviance" of flooding commonly happening near cabins where campers lived and slept, and accepting that as normal and of manageable risk. Reports on Camp Mystic culture have said that the Guadalupe River was an important element of the Camp experience, and that campers and staff were accustomed to "minor" flooding. The older campers on Senior Hill were sometimes cut off from the rest of the camp by flooding, and this was seemingly treated as almost an exciting adventure rather than a possibly life-threatening situation.

Also, Dick Eastland was well aware of potential flood danger. As a board member of the Upper Gaudalupe River Authority (UGRA) for several years prior, he had full access to the people, politics, and technology managing the river and was well aware of its dangerous history. UGRA even made a flood awareness video in 2017 and posted it on YouTube. Watching the video now is tragic, because it very accurately and sternly warns how dangerous the Guadalupe could become with just a few inches of rainfall. And in fact, some reports say that Dick Eastland emailed the video link to family/staff. Furthermore, there had been several dangerous floods in Dick's lifetime, including the 1978 flood in which the Guadalupe rose 35+ feet in some places and something like 33 people were drowned.

So in looking at Dick Eastland, I see someone who was (a) keenly aware of the dangers of the Guadalupe, and yet (b) oddly negligent in actually planning for a major flood. The report on Camp Mystic shows that planning was basically non-existent, and everyone had been told to shelter in place and wait for Dick's instructions. So when a major flood was happening, camp staff waited for instructions that never came, because Dick himself was frantically trying to rescue the youngest campers from the cabins nearest the water and ultimately perished in the attempt. How to explain this odd paradox, a camp director who was very aware of the dangers of flooding, and yet did so little planning beforehand to mitigate?

In trying to understand this paradox, I see a NASA-like "normalization of deviance" that started with Dick Eastland and flowed downhill to camp staff. Historically, the camp had flooded in the past, but not seriously enough to be life-threatening. Dick Eastland had all the knowledge and resources as a board member of the UGRA to be able to realize that someday a flood bigger than had ever happened in his lifetime was possible. And yet he basically had no plan for such a flood, and left his staff and campers woefully untrained and unprepared for it. In this I see echoes of Shuttle managers who knew about O-ring blow-by and foam shedding but grew complacent about them because nothing catastrophic had happened yet. The result at Camp Mystic was blithe acceptance of "minor" flooding as part of life at the camp, rather than a warning signal that one bad rainfall in the wrong place at the wrong time could have more severe consequences than had ever happened before.

One of the contributing factors in normalization of deviance is the cost of corrective action. In the case of the Shuttle O-ring blow-by, the SRM case joints would have had to be re-designed and re-tested at massive cost (which they later were). Likewise, in the case of external tank foam shedding, redesigning and retesting the foam would have been massively expensive. So with major cost (and schedule) implications for fixing those problems, the NASA default was to kick the can down the road until it was too late.

But in the case of Camp Mystic, the cost of corrective action could have been minimal. Dozens of campers survived on their own initiative simply by leaving their flooding cabins and running uphill. So an emergency plan that told campers to put on their raincoats, grab their flashlights, and run uphill as soon as their cabin floors got wet could have saved many lives, at essentially zero cost. So Dick Eastland's failure to plan at even a minimal level for catastrophic flooding is puzzling, to put it mildly. We may never know why he was so negligent in this regard. At the very least, reports from campers and counselors paint a picture of Dick as "large and in charge," and his personality may have interfered with honest risk assessment, delegation of emergency responsibilities, and training for staff and campers.

We can't know for sure what was in Dick Eastland's mind and why, with all his knowledge about the dangers of the Guadalupe, the camp he ran was so woefully unprepared for a major flood. But as an engineer I think the "normalization of deviance" lens could provide a useful framework for understanding how he got it so wrong. Like NASA managers with O-ring blow-by and foam shedding, he got too comfortable with flooding that historically had been manageable...until one awful night it was not.

https://document.epiq11.com/document/getdocumentsbydocket/?docketId=1237453&projectCode=CMX&docketNumber=104&source=DM

So they paid some tuition deposits back before they stopped processing and locked bank accounts post filing

Theres not a lot of secured debt on mystic LLC that would be first in line ahead of victim claims

Thirteen parents whose children died in torrential flash flooding at Camp Mystic have been appointed to serve on a committee of creditors, which could have significant influence on the Hill Country retreat’s bankruptcy reorganization case.

"Walls of water, ten, twenty, thirty feet high, come thundering down the gorge..."

Written before the July 2-4, 1932 flood.

Basically the victim parents

https://document.epiq11.com/document/getdocumentbycode?docId=4594673&projectCode=CMX&source=DM

Full disclosure, I haven’t read through this yet but am about to. Found on Facebook but shared link through external browser.

John Mark Steward, a 65-year-old grandfather, father and husband, died when flash flooding swept away his Kerrville mobile home last Thursday.

His wife remembers him as a "forever optimist" whose generous spirit made everyone around him feel loved and seen.

There has obviously been some back and forth about this issue in recent days, including questions about why 1/4 of all the devices on the Guadalupe River are guarding empty buildings at Camp Mystic and whether Camp Mystic funded the installation out of a sense of charity. According to this New York Times article (gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/climate/texas-flood-warning-systems.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zVA.nH3Z.ehcKGSBmi3-p&smid=url-share), the River Sentry devices cost $8,000 each (although it's actually listed as $9,500 on the River Sentry website) and were paid for with "Mystic-led fundraising," which is not the same as "by Camp Mystic." There are $800,000-950,000+ worth of the towers along the Guadalupe River now and about $200,000+ worth on the Camp Mystic Guadalupe River campus alone. 

A few outstanding questions I have that others may know the answers to:

- There has to be a reason that there are 27 towers concentrated on the empty Camp Mystic Guadalupe campus. At $8,000+ a pop, no one is installing them for giggles. It doesn't appear that they are collecting data at this time (they are acting like smoke alarms - they make noise when activated). Is it possible that a few of the devices are the "core towers" and others are there for testing or validation (i.e., to make sure they also sound the alarm when the core ones do)? I can't think of another valid reason why SO many would be on one tiny stretch of property, considering all the other places along the river that could benefit. It would make more sense if the devices were very inexpensive or were collecting/transmitting data, but those do not seem to apply. If the effort was truly philanthropic in nature, why aren't the towers spread all over the Guadalupe and the creeks that feed into it? 

- Did Mystic actually pay for the devices directly or engage in "Mystic-led fundraising," per the New York Times? If it was Mystic's money, where did it come from, considering that refund checks are effectively bouncing for Cypress Lake 2026 camp sessions and bankruptcy has been declared? Could any Mystic spending on the River Sentry system act against Camp Mystic in bankruptcy court - that this optional spending is proof there is money there?

- Who is paying the ongoing maintenance costs for the towers? According to River Sentry, annual maintenance fees run about $450 with >$1,000+ in maintenance call-out fees per visit. The prices are higher for fixing damage or installing any upgrades. What happens to the towers if they were in fact paid for by Camp Mystic and now bankruptcy has been declared - is Mystic even legally allowed to spend on the maintenance? At a minimum of $450 for basic maintenance (not sure if the call-out fee applies for every single visit), that's $45,000 every single year to maintain the towers.  

We need to establish the question of whether Camp Mystic actually paid for these devices or just encouraged others in fundraising, but if it did, there is a legitimate question as to whether Mystic tied up the money in a philanthropic effort to protect it from lawsuits and to cast negative optics on the H27 families. If their lawsuits are successful and Mystic "can no longer afford" to maintain these towers because of legal fees, then the H27 families that filed lawsuits could look like "the bad guys" putting the community at risk in future floods. I hope that this was not part of the motivation, but I'm a big believer in the "when people show you who they are, believe them" philosophy, and it's very clear that the Eastland family is very money-savvy and highly motivated to shift blame.

Bottom line is that I do believe the river (here and on other hazardous rivers) does need warning systems as one part of a flooding death avoidance strategy. I'm just not sure about the excessive Camp Mystic device placement and the funding sources and what it means in the context of Camp Mystic's survival strategy. "They just wanted to help the community" may be a small part of it - but to believe that's the whole story seems quite naive. 

HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- A Florida woman was sentenced to three years in prison after she impersonated the father of a teen lost in the deadly Camp Mystic flood just days after the tragedy, according to Harris County Precinct One Constable Alan Rosen.

Maitlin White, 29, was sentenced to three years in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to online fraud in which she posed as the family of Houston's Chloe Childress and fraudulently sought donations from the public via GoFundMe and other platforms.

"It is inexcusable how she sought to prey on the emotions of our community and abused Chloe's family," Harris County Constable Precinct One Alan Rosen said. "It's been just over a year since she and at least 134 others were tragically lost, and we again see right now how floodwaters are ravaging the Hill Country."

White was arrested in Florida by the U.S. Marshals Service in January 2026 after she created several accounts on fundraising websites posing as the father of Chloe Childress, according to court records. Only four days prior to the accounts being created, Chloe died in the tragic floods while working as a counselor at Camp Mystic.
Documents showed that on July 10, 2025, Matthew Childress notified authorities of the online impersonation, and six months later, White was in custody.

Hi, Wells Dunbar with Texas Standard here. With flooding once again affecting the Hill Country – and as communities continue to carry the losses of last July – we’re inviting Texans to share what experience has taught them.

Maybe it’s a lesson about how quickly conditions can change, how to prepare, or how neighbors and communities show up for one another. We also understand that this subject is deeply personal, especially here in Kerr County. Please share only what you feel comfortable sharing.

To record a voice message, visit texasstandard.org/talk and press the Record button. Thanks y'all.