another ruling April 16<\/a>, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble noted the camp\u2019s operators \u201cpotentially violated\u201d a section of the Texas Administrative Code \u201cby failing to maintain a written evacuation plan or provide documented safety training which supports a finding of negligence per se.\u201d<\/p>\nThat assertion is serious. It is also, at this stage,\u00a0subject to debate. Testimony about a missing document is not the same as proof that no plan existed, that staff were untrained or that decisions made in the middle of an unprecedented flood were negligent under the law.<\/p>\n
The standard is not perfection. It is reasonableness under extreme conditions. And those conditions matter.<\/p>\n
One hundred and nineteen people died across\u00a0Kerr County in the July 4 flood\u00a0\u2014 not just at one camp, not just in one place and not just under one set of decisions.<\/p>\n
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Emergency systems failed. Alerts were delayed. First responders were overwhelmed. Entire families, in their own homes, with no custodial duty to others, made life-and-death decisions with incomplete information \u2014 and many still died.<\/p>\n
That does not absolve anyone. But it does call into question the claim that one group, in one place, making one set of decisions, could have prevented what the broader emergency response system could not.<\/p>\n
Hindsight is not the legal standard. The law does not ask what seems obvious after a tragedy. It asks what a reasonable person would have understood in real time, with fragmented information, in darkness, as multiple waterways rose unpredictably.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the danger of evacuation was shown by the fact that the camp\u2019s director, Richard \u201cDick\u201d Eastland, died attempting one. That alone complicates any claim that the correct course of action was clear, safe and obvious. There is a profound difference between a tragic outcome and a legally negligent decision.<\/p>\n
![\"O'Kelley]()
<\/p>\n
O’Kelley and Paul Little are the San Antonio parents of a Camp Mystic camper.<\/p>\n
Courtesy O’Kelley and Paul Littl<\/p>\n
There is a deeper problem with the argument that the state must finish its investigations before making any licensing decision about Camp Mystic. It signals a costly form of prejudgment. It risks sending a message to operators of summer camps, schools or child care facilities across Texas that, in the wake of a disaster, they may be judged not only by what they knew or did but by what others later believe they should have done.<\/p>\n
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It replaces standards with speculation. It replaces evidence with narrative.<\/p>\n
None of this is to say the families of all 119 who died do not deserve answers. They do. Every parent does.<\/p>\n
Answers will certainly not come from preventing the healing that hundreds of other children and families seek by returning to those camp rituals and relationships that they held so dear.<\/p>\n
Kerrville resident Randi Webber wrote that we face a choice: to be \u201cdestroyed by blame or rebuilt by truth.\u201d\u00a0Blame is immediate. It is satisfying. It has a target. Truth is slower. It is harder. It requires restraint.<\/p>\n
As members of the Mystic family, we have stood with families in grief. We have also witnessed how quickly grief can give rise to accusations before all of the facts are known. Both call for the same discipline: to honor suffering without surrendering judgment.<\/p>\n
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We believe the state of Texas can do both.<\/p>\n
Investigate fully. Demand answers. Examine every decision made that night \u2014 from Washington to Austin to Kerr County to the riverbanks themselves.<\/p>\n
But do not suspend the rule of law in the meantime.<\/p>\n
If Camp Mystic meets the legal requirements for licensure today, it should be allowed to open its Cypress Lake campus. If it does not, it should not. That determination must rest on evidence.<\/p>\n
We trust Camp Mystic and the\u00a0Eastlands. Even in the shadow of tragedy, we remain committed to truth, fairness and the law.<\/p>\n
That is the standard we ask the state to uphold.<\/p>\n
O’Kelley and Paul Little\u00a0are the San Antonio parents of a daughter who attended Camp Mystic last year and plans to return this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas state lawmakers serving on general investigating committees examining the July 2025 flooding walk the grounds of Camp…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-264178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-texas","9":"tag-texas-headlines","10":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264178","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=264178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}