The investigators did not blame the other adults, who included members of the grounds crew, seasonal workers from Poland and other members of the Eastland family, for not trying to help campers and, in some cases, evacuating themselves to higher ground. Instead, Mr. Massengale said, the lack of planning meant that they had no explicit roles in emergency response and “generally were unaware of the horrors experienced by the campers” during the flood.
Another investigator, Casey Garrett, said that it was “a tragic disservice to these people that they were starved of information” during the flood. “They now live with acute survivor’s guilt and acute trauma,” she said. “Nobody had any instruction about what to do in an emergency.”
The investigator’s report, adopted by the committee nearly a year after the flooding, reached four broad conclusions about the camp’s handling of the flood and its aftermath. Its investigators, at the hearing on Thursday, summarized details that were also discussed at a hearing with investigators this spring and in reporting in The New York Times last fall. (The report itself was not immediately released for administrative reasons, a spokeswoman for the committee chair said, adding it would likely be released next week.)
Camp Mystic, situated along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country, did not have written emergency plans for a flood, the investigators concluded, did not adequately prepare for the July storm and did not begin its evacuation quickly enough. The investigators also found that after the waters receded, the camp’s efforts to help families reunite with their surviving children and inform those whose children had died were “chaotic, with traumatic effects for these families.”
A spokesman for the camp did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Members of the Eastland family, who have owned the camp for decades and lived through past floods, have said the river had never risen as high before. They have said they were overwhelmed by the scale and speed of the flooding that hit in the dark early morning hours of July 4.
The Eastlands had planned to partially reopen Camp Mystic this summer in an area that did not flood last year, but they faced hurdles. A state agency said in April that it might deny them a license to open, citing shortcomings in their emergency plans. Soon after, under pressure from the victims’ families and from state lawmakers, the camp said it would remain closed.