That's a free-access link.
Excerpt: "As the water encroached, the teenage counselors, cut off from others, were left to make frantic life-and-death decisions. They began rousting girls from their cabins, the younger campers screaming or crying as they waited for help or were ushered to higher ground. Dick Eastland, 70, and other staffers eventually realized that the Bubble Inn and Twins cabins, which held the littlest girls — some as young as 8 — were in the most danger, Eastland Jr. said. A swirling eddy of water had formed from two directions...."
పోస్ట్లు
36 కామెంట్లు:
I was standing in the knee-deep Niobrara yesterday. It ran at 6 mph. I lost one of my water shoes. It was tough walking. Those counselors who rescued the littles were strong.
We’re more than half a dozen Althouse blog-worthy posts in on this story and as tragic as it is I’ve tended to avert my gaze after the initial news for fear of discovering the stories are evolving into accident porn and worse, noticing the political associations of the media churning the stories out, there are bad actors trying vigorously to Katrina Trump with the posts, imaging leftie ghouls diligently compiling focus group data to tweak the stories for maximum impact on Trump’s popularity. I’m not sure it warrants a special place in Hell for these people but adding them to the general population seems appropriate…
Watching this story from afar you thought that the camp was caught completely unaware and it was all Trump's fault.
There are ghouls and demons around trying to blame this on Trump and Trump supporters.
I think the NAZI party and it's members had more decency than the Democrat party and Democrats who have been waving these kids bloody shirts this last week. I can't remember if the NAZIs were the ones that came up with eating baby blood thing or if that was the Muslims though.
They both have the same goals. It is just disgusting to see about 30% of the people in the US descend to this level of depravity.
"...a [Washington] Post investigation found...."
Suddenly, it has become fashionable again for the media to become curious enough about a story to investigate it.
One of the top recommended comments blamed global warming. The Left never rests.
Another great piece - thank you Ann for the free link.
Quit wallowing around in your own self pity over the slings and arrows fired at Trump and his supporters. Makes you look like you're standing on the corpses of little girls crying whoa is me.
It does sort of remind me of the Our Lady of the Angels fire.
RR
JSM
YOU PEOPLE, Howard, can fuck right off.
May the people of Texas do what’s necessary to lessen the chances of something like this happening again and may all the families who’ve lost young ones and other family members find some comfort with the knowledge that their loved ones rest in the arms of a loving God.
Everything is viewed through the lens of politics these days. sad... a few random thoughts:
- the MSM loves to call Mystic a CHRISTIAN Camp, as though that matters one bit.
- the FEMA Flood Plain waiver is worth investigating
- it was 1AM, and raining cats and dogs. The guy in charge dithered. He screwed up. The circling lawyers will make the insurance carrier and family pay. I want to point out that the Boss didn't flee. He died rescuing kids...He paid full price as we say...
- I read nothing about cowardice by the foamily or staff. They appear to have dug in and performed well, given the circumstances
- at this point, it's all second guessing a tragedy
When a tragedy like this happens it's beyond us to make any sense of it or to discern how it could be part of a divine plan.
It makes me think of the Thornton Wilder novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
A quote from the book: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, only survival, the only meaning."
Two things must be emphasized - this was litterally a flood that comes along once in 100 years. Talking about "this is a flash flood zone" ignores that camp, that had been around for 75 years or more, never had more than 1 flash flood that endangered anyone.
2nd - this flood happened at exactly the wrong time. 4 am - when all the girls were asleep and in their cabins as were most of the staff.
Finally, the "Well they should have evacuated at the first sign of flooding" ignores they probably get 10 or more "Flash flood" warning every summer, and none of them turn out to be dangerous.
The real question is why didnt Kern County use it flash flood cell phone system? The WaPo doesn't delve into that.
"Watching this story from afar you thought that the camp was caught completely unaware and it was all Trump's fault."
At this point, anything and everything happening that's bad is Trump's fault. It's enough to cause normal people to start ignoring the message.
A true life-threatening situation like this is rare, and almost none of us ever have to make such a decision or take the right action to save lives. The warnings are almost always just that, a warning, and nothing comes of it. We live in a time of high safety where we worry about things like microplastics and climate change, which we have no power to avoid, and yet we are warned about multiple times per day. Maybe we have too much irrational fear, too many warnings, and too much manufactured drama, so that when we really need to act we have no way of knowing that this is the one, and we are the individual that lives depend on. I understand the hesitancy. It's rational.
I just cannot bear to read anything more about this tragedy. I hate that some people are trying to play the blame game and punish people.
Democrats apparently believe that natural disasters are just a policy problem you can vote away, at least when Republicans are in power.
Yes but there is a sense to make of it right away. As anyone in the public safety arena will tell you there is a chain of factors that have to be completely connected in order to have a failure of this kind. One important piece of information I got about flying little bug smashers, was that Murphy's law is 180° wrong. What actually is the case is that many times we blunder along unaware of the weakening links in our chain of safety and by the grace of God that final length doesn't fail. Once getting away with it it falsely improves your confidence in decision making.
A little bit of hubris that's in something that we are all susceptible to. Like the assassination in Butler, we are all partly responsible it is a free country. Better common knowledge of geography and hydrology couple that with skills like swimming running climbing being aware of your surroundings in nature etc.
Playing the blame game is revolting. Remember for whom the Bell tolls.
It’s vulgar and repulsive to recount minute details of final moments. The only reasons to do it are repulsive. They died tragically in a way hindsight tells us was possibly preventable. We get it. We don’t need six more posts of details. We’ll get them anyways…
Yeah, they put the fucking camp INSIDE the banks of a fucking river. Idiots. It's homicide. It's negligent homicide. And they should arrest every owner of that camp.
In San Antonio here. The regional community support is immense. No overt blame games. Green ribbons on trees everywhere. Large donors have stipulated that warning systems be installed. There is nothing that can change the lost lives or to know in hindsight that many could have been prevented. It’s one of those perfect storm events.
It's a hurricane, a tornado, a mud slide, a sink hole, an alligator attack... a high risk environment. It was an impulse event with little warning. The girls acted courageously in short order and saved diverse lives.
The conditions were ripe, but the vector and amplitude could not be predicted. A history of false positives of a rare confluence of factors leads to a risky climate. We do it anyway. RIP
The Drill SGT said..."the MSM loves to call Mystic a CHRISTIAN Camp, as though that matters one bit."
Yeah, I've noticed that, too. It generally comes with an implied "Where is your god now?", as if no Christian has ever grappled with that question before.
bagoh20 said...
"Democrats apparently believe that natural disasters are just a policy problem you can vote away, at least when Republicans are in power."
And when Democrats are in power, it's a problem of Republicans blocking spending enough money on the problem.
Interesting that it has been about 10 days, yet we know so much about the individual actions of various individuals across Kerr County. A year later, we know almost nothing about the actions of various individuals in Butler county despite most of them being government employees. Which one sounds like people are trying to hide incompetence?
FormerLawClerk said...
Yeah, they put the fucking camp INSIDE the banks of a fucking river. Idiots. It's homicide. It's negligent homicide. And they should arrest every owner of that camp.
7/14/25, 10:10 AM
Wow, with cogent "legal analysis" of that quality, I assume your title as a FormerLawClerk is because you have been subsequently disbarred?
If you want to talk about "preventable loss of life" I'd suggest the Maui and Palisades fires are Exhibit No. 1. And from I've heard, the rebuiling process in both places has been plagued by corruption, graft, and incompetence. Suprise Suprise.
We need more information on the Kern Couty Government and what they did or didn't do. Less about little girls dying.
Bob Boyd: respect.
And those young woman who tried to save their charges and lost their lives? Posthumous Presidential honors to all.
Quit wallowing around in your own self pity over the slings and arrows fired at Trump and his supporters.
We aren't the ones lying about the situation in order to blame others, asshole.
The camp was built before there were any floodway and floodplain designations, and later, most of the camp was shown to be above the baseline flood elevation (above the 100-year risk). Those hardest hit cabins were in the floodway (the most dangerous) and the camp did not appear to have done any mitigation (typically elevating the buildings) for those cabins.
I wanted to know if FEMA had changed its zoning over time and if that contributed to the camp being non-compliant, but I couldn't find anything specifically addressing that.
I mention this because the town in which I live recently had FEMA completely change its flood mapping, which resulted in much of the town now being in the floodway. The town could not be built today, and yet, here it stands, where it has been for nearly 150 years.
I have little sympathy for parents who are complaining that the Camp Mystic people didn't send anything out until 11:30am. Catastrophic flooding, no cell service, but someone should have emailed everyone at 8am.
From what I've seen so far it seems like Bubble Inn is the only cabin to lose everyone. Terrible.
Why are some of you getting defensive against the labeling of the camp as "Christian"? Christianity was definitely part of the camp identity, just as my kid's Jewish day camp is too (even though most of the kids who go aren't Jewish). If it was a YMCA camp, that would probably get mentioned. Everyone who I have heard providing testimonials or stories about the camp has mentioned prayers or some of Christian reference.
Thanks, Tina Trent.
Same.
"Yeah, they put the fucking camp INSIDE the banks of a fucking river. Idiots. It's homicide. It's negligent homicide. And they should arrest every owner of that camp."
They're over in the cemetery. You'll need a shovel.
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.