"Thoughts and prayers don't cut it when your daughter has been swept away by a flash flood. Not even a little."

Considering most of the victims were attending a Christian summer camp. I think prayers mean a whole lot to those families right now, and they are clinging to their faith to pull them through this horrific event.

I am not Christian, and personally do not believe in the "power of prayer" , but this is about them, not me.

There are MANY other relevant factors that contributed to this an incident like this. Ignoring these in favor of a dominant focus on political arguments guarantees that no real action will be taken to address these factors and actually prevent future tragedies like this.

So since you asked ... ..

Disclaimer: I acknowledge that my views here speculative and anecdotal, but based on my experience living in flood zone and hurricane ravaged area, and taking part in mutual aid responses to natural disasters in other parts of the county. If you believe I am wrong, I am happy to review your source material and learn from it. If you just want to insult me an fight, don't waste your time, you are probably already on my plonk list.

1) The camp, and everyone within miles of the floodprone areas probably do have a NOAA radio, and cell phones with weather apps, etc. The problem is we don't listen to them, particularly when we are sleeping. Many of these devices have alerts that wake you, but we often turn those down or off. Because the way they are designed, the alerts go off pretty much constantly during thunderstorms. They don't do a good job filtering the difference between "patio furniture might blow over 100 miles away" from "Everyone on Oak Street, crawl into your bath tub right now". I know this because I am the paranoid one in my house that stays up for three days straight listening to all of them, looking at a paper map trying to figure out how close the tornados are because the internet is down.

2) The "Cry Wolf Factor" is huge. These folks are exposed to generations of being told "You are in serious peril with great risk of loss and life". This is WILDLY EXCARCEBATED by local and regional news media, as wells as the Weather Channel who feeds the frenzy with exaggerated alarmist rhetoric and even fake footage to keep people from changing the channel. Nearly all the time, the storm passes without incident, and at the celebratory BBQ the discussion is,"They always say that" "It never happens", "They always turn at the last minute" "The highest the water ever got was that tree down there". Does that ean the forecast was inaccurate? Absolutely not. The forecast SHOULD be worse than the actual outcome 90% of the time, because it is PRECAUTIONARY, and weather predictability has limits. But the stress of reacting to the constant "false alarms" wears on people and conditions complacency.

3) This camp, apparently in the same family ownership for 150 years, has generations of storytelling, they might have felt confident in the property history to have said, "We will be fine, the campsites have never flooded, or even "God is watching over us".

4) Circling back to #2, Local Media, both TV and Radio, is evaporating in favor of national syndication. I doubt that flash flood warnings in a sparsely populated area like Kerrville even attracted the attention of the weather channel. So even if the forecast is there, who is talking directly to the people about it? Hopefully local government officials are apprised, but how are they going to get word out to the people when local TV and radio stations are often not even staffed at night. Now many governments have emergency alert systems via texting apps, so to that, circle back to #1. People shut those of because they get tired of awakening for missing grandma and boiled water alerts.

That brings us back to the campground. Ultimately the people responsible for protecting those children is the adults in charge of the camp. With a location in a known flood area, and known flash flood watch in effect since lunchtime, at the very minimum, they needed an emergency evacuation plan and SOMEONE on wide awake all night listening to the NOAA radio for updates.

AU, What you describe is exactly the sort of solutions that are needed. It sounds like they already had an older text based system called "Code Red". Not clear what role Code Red played in this event, but here is more about their efforts to upgrade it. Lots of blame to go around, but it.

Something else that jumped out at me (google Camp Mystic) is several dam like structures that appear to bound the waterway into swimming areas. One of these appears to be very new, in the proximity of the cabins the youngest children were in, which were also very close to the creek. The entire creek and about half the cabins are in Flood Zone A (below 100 year flood zone elevation)

I don't know much about Texas law, but I am very familiar with Florida laws for construction in flood zones, which are based on FEMA, DEP and Army Corps of Engineers guidelines. Generally all construction must have all finished floor areas at least one foot above the 100 year flood elevation, and you can't you can't build retaining walls or other structures which would impede the passage of flood waters through the area.

My links didn't work. Google maps 186 Felix Fisher Road, Hunt, TX ad the same for FEMA maps NFHL viewer.

My point here on the dam/retaining wall, is that it APPEARS (I'm no expert) that Cypress Creek (which wraps around the camp) is fed by runoff from surrounding hills and naturally flows west/north to join the South Fork of the Guadalupe River. The former creekbed is apparent from the cypress treeline (Cypresses grow on submerged lands and appear gray and gold compared to the green of upland trees) but the creeks thins to a trickle west/north of this dam. Presumable the dam was built to enclose a basin for water sports and maybe protect the downstream cabins from milder flooding, but it likely increased the risk.

The purpose of the laws is that when the natural flow of a waterway or floodway is artifically impeded, floodwaters that could pass through and get out of the area instead accumulate to greater depths, and then when the impeding structure is overtopped, increased turbulence and velocity make conditions far more dangerous.

Possibly the dam was engineered and fully approved, I'm sure that is something that will be closely examined.

Did a little more research, it appears the camp property is divided into two camps. The new dam I pointed out and the adjacent cabins are on the new camp to the south. The lost children were in the older part of the property to the north directly on the South Fork of the Guadalupe river which has an older dammed off swim area, so they were getting water from both waterways. The entire old/north camp where the children were housed lies within a regulatory floodway which essentially defines the riverbed, and I don't think you can build ANY structures in a floodway anymore, but the old camp may be grandfathered in.

So, solutions:
Build in flood zones only according to CURRENT regulations and at your own expense and risk.
Occupy non-compliant, grandfathered structures at your own risk.
Grandfathered existing, non-compliant structures should not be permitted to be used as commercial dwellings

Better delivery systems/apps for warnings with filters that allow you to screen alerts.
For example, in my area, I get Advisories, Watches, Warnings and Severe Warnings from up to 100 miles away, for fog, heavy rains, thunderstorms, tropical storms high winds, rip currents, dangerous lightning, wildfires, water spouts, tornados. All of which are repeated with an alert tone every few minutes. I have tied many different apps, most of which have a direct feed of NOAA data, but none that can effectively filter these by distance or severity.

Ideally, I would like one that can limit geographical difference, and send an alert tone only with new or changing alerts. For example, during a hurricane, I've been on alert for hours already and I'm hunkered down. I don't need to be awakened every five minutes with a piercing tone telling me there is a still a severe thunderstorm watch in effect, just let me know when there a tornado spotted within 10 miles so I can wake everybody up and get to the safest room in the house. I haven't yet found an app that can do that, but I don't sleep much anyway during a hurricane.

Yeah, I was encouraging my daughter to get at least take a cheap AM radio from me to monitor news during a hurricane a few years back. She said, "I have an a radio app on my phone". She just didn't get it that when the power goes out and the towers go down her apps won't work.

The AM radio used to be helpful to listen to local news updates and commentary from the Emergency Operations Center, but during the last couple storms the local radio news stations were just playing talk radio reruns, no live coverage at all. Local TV stations stayed live, but I always lose Cable.

The apps are more helpful to filter out some of the constant repetitive noise from weather band as the storm approaches, but once it arrives, I switch to the weather band for the NOAA updates. That radio is essential.

#41 I agree completely. I read Kerr County's emergency management plan and it was surprisingly comprehensive. All of the things I mentioned above were in their plan, Community education and outreach, improving delivery of alerts, enforcement of building codes, etc. Whether there was been follow through, and whether it will experience a decline in effectiveness, certainly budget cuts will impact that.

To me, the most troubling factor in all of this is the absolute recklessness of operating a camp which requires children to sleep in non-compliant structures built within a well studied floodway with a high likelihood of dangerous flooding, which would be entirely illegal under current laws, for very good reason. In addition to this they have likely violated numerous laws through their additional construction and "improvements" and the dams that alter the natural course of the creek. The camp should have been closed years ago, but at the very least they should have moved the children to higher ground at the mere HINT of flash flood danger. Their apparent disregard for these dangers is so reckless it borders on criminal negligent homicide.