Texas officials approved Camp Mystic’s operating plan days before the fatal floods

Two days before flash floods on the Guadalupe River in Texas killed at least 27 campers and staff at a Christian girls summer camp, a state inspector was there to approve camp operations and noted there was a written plan for responding to natural disasters.

What that plan said, however, is unclear. Texas does not approve or keep copies of emergency plans; camps are only required to show they have a plan in place. Officials at Camp Mystic — still reeling from the deaths of campers, staffers and its director, and the ongoing search for others — could not be reached for comment on what the plan included or how the camp responded to Friday’s flood.

Questions are swirling around the emergency response by state and local officials and whether the flood plan the camp laid out was adequate, or was even executed as the historic flash flood struck in the darkness.

Fed by pounding rainfall, the Guadalupe River in Kerr County rose more than 20 feet in one hour before dawn on Friday and crested at more than 34 feet later that morning; it had been roughly 1 foot deep since at least June 10.

The swollen river overwhelmed Camp Mystic, where counselors and campers awoke in the dark and tried to dash through rising water, some clinging to trees or scrambling up rocky escarpments. Many were swept away.