{"id":84604,"date":"2025-12-11T22:42:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/84604\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T22:42:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T22:42:06","slug":"texas-camp-mystic-hopes-new-flood-warning-system-will-prevent-future-catastrophes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/84604\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas’ Camp Mystic hopes new flood warning system will prevent future catastrophes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kerrville, Texas \u2014 At the scene of one of the deadliest flash floods<\/a> in Texas history, 8-foot-tall aluminum towers are starting to appear on the banks of the Guadalupe River, part of a flash flood warning system that is being installed. <\/p>\n

In early July, more than 130 people were killed in catastrophic flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country region, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic<\/a>, a private Christian summer camp for girls. In the days immediately after the flooding, officials said<\/a> the Guadalupe River rose quickly and with little warning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ian Cunningham, CEO and founder of River Sentry, is leading a small team that is conducting tower installations for Camp Mystic’s Cypress Lake location, which is uphill from its sister camp, Camp Mystic Guadalupe, where the deadly flooding struck. <\/p>\n

In September<\/a>, Camp Mystic announced it would reopen its Cypress Lake site next summer. \u00a0<\/p>\n

It also announced<\/a> earlier this month that it was implementing safety upgrades and installing the new warning system. The camp said the warning system being installed by Cunningham and his team will be in addition to a new flood siren system<\/a> being installed under legislation<\/a> passed by Texas state lawmakers.<\/p>\n

Cunningham, a Navy veteran and commercial pilot, planned to donate the units to the camps, but a private foundation stepped in and covered the funding for 100 towers, which are estimated to cost $7,500 each. The sirens chosen for the towers are intended to produce 75 decibels of noise inside a structure in order to wake people up. The towers will be placed at five feet lower than the structure \u2014 the cabin or home, for example \u2014 that they’re protecting, and are using the metric of water rising one foot per minute, which would give people five minutes to escape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Britt Eastland, the director of Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, spoke exclusively with CBS News about the new alarms.<\/p>\n

“That’s another reason why we like this product, is, it will react and do what it’s supposed to do without someone needing to be awake to set off the alarm,” Eastland said.<\/p>\n

Eastland explained that the camp is looking to do even more than the state will provide. In September, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott\u00a0signed two bills<\/a> aimed at improving camp safety in the wake of the tragedy. The bills, now laws, require camps to install and maintain emergency alert systems, train staff on emergency routes, require cabins to be located away from flood plains and mandate state inspections, among other things. Camp Mystic has vowed to go above and beyond state requirements.<\/p>\n

“We needed something that was going to provide us confidence, and all the parents’ confidence, something that would make sure this never happened again,” Eastland said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The families of several of the campers and counselors who died\u00a0sued Camp Mystic and its owners last month<\/a>\u00a0for gross negligence and reckless disregard for safety. The lawsuit, filed in Travis County District Court, seeks accountability for what the plaintiffs described as an “entirely preventable tragedy.”<\/p>\n

Cunningham told CBS News that, like many people, he asked himself at the time how such a tragedy could have happened.<\/p>\n

“And it’s happened before, multiple times here in Texas,” Cunningham said. “And I kind of think, this has to be technologically solvable.” <\/p>\n

Cunningham said he didn’t look at this process like a business, but as a way to save lives.<\/p>\n

“My two daughters are campers,” Cunningham said. “I can’t imagine what those parents are going through. Like, I shudder at the thought.” <\/p>\n

In an airplane hangar outside of Austin, Cunningham and his team combined water sensors from fishing boats with sirens and lights from ambulances to put together the flash flood warning system.<\/p>\n

Crucially, the system is designed to work even if power and cell towers go down. The research and design took them less than two months.<\/p>\n

“You know, at a basic level, we’re providing a smoke detector for floods on your property perimeter,” Cunningham said of the system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kerrville, Texas \u2014 At the scene of one of the deadliest flash floods in Texas history, 8-foot-tall aluminum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3576,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-84604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-flooding","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84604","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=84604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}