No. of Recommendations: 17
Two camps sat on the Guadalupe River, and for one, it was the best of times. For the other, it was the worst of times.
Barely ten miles by river separated the two camps. Both had portions of their camps directly by the river, and other portions of their camps were located at varying elevations above the river.
One, Camp Mystic, made the mistake of believing the NWS and local rebroadcasts of the NWS warning that flooding was expected on the Guadalupe. The Guadalupe always flooded. There was nothing unusual about that, just as there was nothing unusual about the NWS forecast of 3-5 inches of rainfall. Sure, it would be a problem, but they'd faced similar problems before.
The other camp, Mo-Ranch, was a Presbyterian camp whose director had some questions about the NWS ability to issue warnings in a timely manner, or track rainfall amounts in anything resembling an actionable fashion....
So the one camp trusted the system.
The other camp sent its staff to the river to monitor conditions on a minute by minute basis, lift canoes and kayaks to higher ground and then, as conditions worsened, move staff and campers to safer elevations.
As the flood waters receded, both camps were revealed to be devastated, but there, the similarities ended. One camp suffered tremendous loss of life. The other kept all of its staff and campers-safe. In fact, its staff has now spread out in the Kerrville area to assist local residents of the hill country.
This is a true story
And the moral of the story is not to condemn one camp while heaping praise on the other for their trust or lack of trust. The one camp cannot be condemned for believing that the NWS provided accurate and up to date data on rainfall and flood conditions. After all, they'd been fairly accurate in past floods.
But the other camp refused to trust without verifying. And that is good advice for everyone going forward. You're on your own, guys. Don't trust anything coming out of this particular federal government. You could die.
