The Federal Emergency Management Agency included Camp Mystic in a «Special Flood Hazard Area» in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County, Texas, in 2011.
Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors, a review by The Associated Press found.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency included the prestigious girls’ summer camp in a «Special Flood Hazard Area» in its National Flood Insurance map for Kerr County in 2011, which means it was required to have flood insurance and faced tighter regulation on any future construction projects.
That designation means an area is likely to be inundated during a 100-year flood — one severe enough that it only has a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
At Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, at least 27 campers and counselors died in what the camp described as «catastrophic flooding» before dawn on July 4. Some survivors said they woke up to water rushing through the windows.
President Trump expressed the «anguish of our entire nation» Friday after he and first lady Melania Trump met with families of the victims of last week’s deadly flooding in Central Texas.
The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by FEMA, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.
But Syracuse University associate professor Sarah Pralle, who has extensively studied FEMA’s flood map determinations, said it was «particularly disturbing» that a camp in charge of the safety of so many young people would receive exemptions from basic flood regulation.
«It’s a mystery to me why they weren’t taking proactive steps to move structures away from the risk, let alone challenging what seems like a very reasonable map that shows these structures were in the 100-year flood zone», she said.
Camp Mystic didn’t respond to emails seeking comment and calls to it rang unanswered. The camp has called the flood an «unimaginable tragedy» and added in a statement Thursday that it had restored power for the purpose of communicating with its supporters.FEMA exempted buildings at new and old sites
In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county’s flood map to remove 15 of the camp’s buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week’s flood.
After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood.
