Camp Mystic leader, who died trying to save small children, waited over an hour after alert before starting evacuation
The adult leader of Camp Mystic, the Texas summer camp where 27 children and counselors died in the Hill Country floods, waited more than an hour after receiving a severe flood warning before initiating an evacuation, it was disclosed on Monday.
Richard “Dick” Eastland, who had run the popular all-girls, Christian-values sleepaway camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River with his family since the 1980s, was among the fatalities after a wall of water rushed through the camp early on 4 July.
A spokesperson for the Eastland family told the Washington Post that a National Weather Service (NWS) alert was sent to his phone at 1.14am warning of “life threatening flash flooding”, and only at 2.30am, with heavy rain still falling and the river level rising fast, he made the decision to begin evacuations.
I think it might be trying to imply that if you were the only one with communications equipment in a known extreme flood risk zone full of children that you are responsible for, you had better not be sleeping at 1am. Also that you probably shouldn’t have fought as hard to be allowed to be in this situation.