{"id":253268,"date":"2026-04-16T22:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/253268\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T22:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T22:05:08","slug":"texas-lawmakers-to-visit-camp-mystic-next-week-as-part-of-investigating-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/253268\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas lawmakers to visit Camp Mystic next week as part of investigating committee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KERR COUNTY, Texas \u2014 A group of Texas state lawmakers is set to visit Camp Mystic on Monday as part of a general investigating committee focused on the July 2025 floods.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/house.texas.gov\/committees\/committee\/355\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">committee<\/a> consists of five Texas state representatives: Chairman Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas), Vice Chairman Joe Moody (D-El Paso), State Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo), State Rep. Paul Dyson (R-Bryan), and State Rep. Erin G\u00e1mez (D-Brownsville).<\/p>\n<p>Both the Texas House and Senate leadership <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ltgov.texas.gov\/2025\/10\/13\/lt-gov-dan-patrick-and-speaker-dustin-burrows-announce-the-creation-of-the-senate-and-house-general-investigating-committees-on-the-july-2025-flooding-events-and-appoint-members\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">announced<\/a> the creation of the committees last fall.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs Texans work to rebuild and recover, it is the responsibility of the legislature to understand what went wrong and ensure our state is better prepared for future emergencies,&#8221; Speaker Dustin Burrows said in a statement at the time.<\/p>\n<p>The visit is set to be limited to lawmakers and their staff, as a<a href=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/witnesses-testify-on-last-day-of-camp-mystic-lawsuit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> temporary restraining order (TRO)<\/a> granted by a Travis County judge currently limits access to the site as the camp faces pending lawsuits.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/witnesses-testify-on-last-day-of-camp-mystic-lawsuit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">PREVIOUS COVERAGE| Witnesses testify on last day of Camp Mystic lawsuit<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The committee&#8217;s visit could influence legislation when lawmakers return to Austin in 2027.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We won&#8217;t see any direct legislation proposed by this committee, but I would have every expectation that there will be some follow-through in the next session, particularly given how much conflict that there&#8217;s been around the legislation that was proposed and passed in the 2025 special sessions,&#8221; said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n<p>Camp Mystic is currently planning to reopen next month despite calls by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for the Department of State Health Services to<a href=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/lt-governor-dan-patrick-urges-nonrenewal-of-camp-mystics-license-after-deadly-july-flood\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> deny a license to the camp<\/a> until investigations are complete.<\/p>\n<p>DSHS and the Texas Rangers are currently investigating the camp&#8217;s response to the July floods.<\/p>\n<p>This week, camp directors <a href=\"https:\/\/cbsaustin.com\/news\/local\/camp-mystic-director-testifies-in-court-hearing-as-it-prepares-to-partially-re-open\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">testified under oath<\/a> in a Travis County courtroom during a three-day evidentiary hearing.<\/p>\n<p>The hearing focused on the preservation of evidence and camp leadership&#8217;s preparation for and response to the catastrophic flood that killed 27 young campers and counselors.<\/p>\n<p>Camp directors testified that they did not expect the water levels to rise as quickly as they did, but also did not make calls to 9-1-1 or attempt to evacuate children from cabins until 3 a.m., despite a flash flood warning by the National Weather Service just after 1 a.m.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were several able-bodied people, including nurses and first responders, available to go cabin to cabin to evacuate these girls, and that didn&#8217;t happen,&#8221; Jennie Getten, mother of 9-year-old flood victim Ellen Getten, told CNN on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Camp Mystic&#8217;s attorneys argue the flood was completely unpredictable.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The tragedy is the water was coming from behind them, from a creek that had never flooded like this before, and you can see in the videos the direction of that water that is trapping everybody in the Twins 1 and 2, in the other cabin where all these girls died,&#8221; Camp Mystic attorney Mikal Watts told CNN.<\/p>\n<p>Camp leadership testified that the families of over 800 girls have enrolled in the camp this summer. Only Camp Mystic Cypress Lake is set to open; the camp neighboring the Camp Mystic Guadalupe campus, where the deadly flooding occurred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KERR COUNTY, Texas \u2014 A group of Texas state lawmakers is set to visit Camp Mystic on Monday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-253268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}