Another question to answer. Why did they put a camp, especially one that is for children, in a flood plain in the first place? Why not a more secure location? Would they build a camp right on the San Andreas fault line also?
They not only put camps on that fault but public schools as well. I worked for a school district that had approval from the state to do that very thing.
It is because we no longer have to think. We are surrounded by a net of humans who won't allow us to fail spectacularly so the lazy and stupid (sorry) survive. Their errors don't kill them although they kill others - similarly look at dead weight and incompetence in large corporations whereas a sole proprietor would be out of business. We were smarter tens of thousands of years ago when ignorant, lazy people were eliminated from the gene pool. Now, we promote them.
I’ve been asking that question since the flood. It was my first question. Is having close access to the river worth the potential danger? I would say no.
Yep, just look at Florida & around the country’s coastlines. The neighborhoods feet from the ocean. Right where hurricanes come annually for Florideans. Crazy. I wish, like everyone else, this camp director had heeded the warning & evacuated the campers down by the river. Hind sight is 20/20.
It has been there for 99 years. I don’t know if damming the river in various places over the years may have worsened the flooding. I heard from someone who is working cleanup in the area that Camp Mystic had recently added Mystic 2 and built a dam to do so, and the dam failed. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what some of the locals were saying. Also heard that one of the boys’ camps nearby had cabins made of wood so they floated, but the cabins at Mystic were concrete block and disintegrated when the floodwaters hit them.
With respect, this assessment is a bit unfair. Eastland had 50 years of experience where flash flooding happens every year and usually is not more serious than temporarily impassable roads and puddles inside a door. The Comfort example is not helpful since that was an evacuating bus that drove into high water. The truth is that a tropical storm remnant dropped an unprecedented 100 billion gallons of water in this area in a matter of hours which caused flood waters to rise 30 feet in 45 minutes. Mystic weathered floods just fine for 100 years. What in the weather warning suggested that this was a uniquely dangerous instance?
That which was uniquely dangerous was an incompetent clown running Rainmaker, a company that seeded the already saturated clouds. That was the cause. Hope the families sue and thus insure such companies can no longer operate without adult supervision.
It is entirely possible cloud seeding a tropical storm remnant caused unique flooding. My understanding is that they do this weather modification on government instructions and contracts and don’t just go out there on their own. It is definitely worth investigating.
Very interesting that this same weather manipulation wasnt used in Hawaii to put OUT the Fires in Lahaina? All Intentional Destruction of America. These Dasterds needs judgement,
So the mullet man Rainmaker was part of the ruse, a red herring that covered for the real geo-engineering? Okay. Same argument. It was not a quirky event that escaped notice out of incompetence.
Mullet Man originally received 100,000. from that purely evil son of a gun Peter Theil. So Mullet Man follows a farmers request for seeding allegedly and has no clue he is going to be used as the patsy to take the fall. The big and real Geo-Engineering was being held and can be mapped and proven and then was dumped just destroying everything on its path. You are spot on and currently in the States they have the most unheard of 4 or 5 one in a thousand year floods in one month. What are the odds?! The thing is they have used this weapon as that is what it was developed for.
It was used in the Vietnam War.
Let’s take Iran how do you weaken a country before pre-emptive strikes. You destroy their water and food sources.
Fact:
The 2024–25 water year has been described as one of the most challenging in Iran's history, with average rainfall about 45% below normal. Nineteen provinces are in significant drought; for example, Hormozgan in the south reported a 77% decrease in rainfall, and Sistan-Baluchestan a 72% drop. What a lovely world we have with the MIC. The US dominates in this technology and the rest of the world knows you upset the US and don’t comply and you get one of two things an overthrow of leadership or a major alleged natural disaster.
They have the ability to create Earthquakes, Redirect Cyclones Inland, Create Drought Or Flood. Tsunami etc
Apparently according to Dane Whittington that small cloud seeding event by Rainmaker couldn’t have anything to do with the floods. It was two days before and not big enough. He thinks it was a decoy for much larger project that he states emphatically did take place based on his assessment and measurements.
Page 7 of this document has a map of all the creeks and forks and tributaries of the Guadalupe west of Comfort. The terrain is very hilly and full of arroyos. This demonstrates the challenges of predicting high water in the area. Each camp has its own unique risk based on its location.
No, if you followed the weather warnings, they made it quite clear that evacuation was a must. Eastland had his head up his ass. Camp Mystics unbelievably stupid rule of no electronics (cell phone, radios) created a death trap for those kids, I think around 30 Camp Mystic kids died.
The NWS issued a flood warning alert for *Kerr County*. It was not an evacuation order for the camp. The camp management was assessing the situation from the outset, they weren’t just sitting there. They went on 100 years of experience which unfortunately was the wrong call for this particular situation.
You don’t know the area. I went to camp near there, so did my mother and daughter. Flash flood warnings are commonplace and usually mean roads will be impassable for a day or two or some water might come in the door. They don’t mean 30 feet of water in 45 minutes. Mystic had 100 years of experience in that spot. This was a freak occurrence.
There were previous flash floods there, this time there was 30 feet in 45 minutes. You don't consider that to err on the side of caution would have been the better course of action? I'll go back also to that none of the girls had cell phones, if they had, there would have been a commotion going on among the girls as the flood alerts coming in on their phones, the counselor would have been prompted to act much sooner and perhaps evacuate. If it had been my kids, camping in a flood plain, with rain in the forecast, I would have insisted they have cell phones and to stay alert.
There are numerous flash flood warnings in that area yearly. The warning was for the entire county. So the entire county is going to evacuate?
I posted a document with a map of the terrain, maybe you should look at it. There are dozens of camps in those hills beside dozens of tributaries and each one has its own risk.
Just because in 1987 one camp 33 miles downstream had flooding (the bus drove into high water which caused the loss of life) does not mean anything for a camp upstream that had a 100 year history of no problems. Why is this so hard to understand?
The camp management was up and listening and discussing the warnings when they came out at like 1:14 am. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the warning. It’s that they thought, and had no reason not to think, that it was like all the other useless warnings they get continually during the summer.
If you want to assign blame assign it to the warning system. It is natural to be upset at such a tragedy and wonder what could have been done. In fact it was a freak occurrence.
They need mechanical gauges upstream from each camp or rv park or neighborhood that are attached to a dedicated siren that warns particular areas. A county wide weather warning is ineffective.
I live in an area with really bad weather. Our meteorologists broadcast radar warnings and have trained spotters calling in. We get
useful warnings on our phones. Maybe something like that would work. What they have doesn’t work.
It is easy to say with hindsight if only they had done this or that then they would have survived. Eastland had 50 years of experience to go on including probably many years of flash flood warnings that turned out to be nothing.
I will say putting the younger campers by the river is something I wouldn’t do, but their cabin was overtopped in 10 minutes at 4;30 am so I doubt older campers would have survived.
The answer (to me) is mechanical gauges upstream coupled with sirens or warnings for specific areas. There are dozens of camps on dozens of waterways and each has a unique risk.
That is sad, and I am thankful he did that instead of running. It doesn't negate incompetence, but it does show courage and honor in placing the children's lives above his own. I abjectly apologize to his family if they read this for my wrong assumption that he survived. Even heroes make mistakes, but they - as did he - often die correcting them. I feel ashamed, as well I should and will delete my insensitive comment, hoping his family hasn't seen it.
I live in Texas and we get alerts all the time and 8 times out of 10, they are inaccurate. I think the judgment of Eastland is too harsh considering his age, the time of night and his long tenure. We don’t know what kind of mental process he went through to figure out what to do. I do agree with the other disasters being sinister though.
Yes! We literally get alerts for flash flooding almost every time it rains here in Texas and very rarely does the rain result in any real danger to the public- like massive flooding etc. I think the Texas disaster is being unfairly assessed by those who are missing basic facts about the volume and speed of the rain/flooding, the inaccuracy of the weather predictions for this day, (which meant they received a serious warning ONLY ONCE it had already began flooding), and finally- how unprecedented this amount of flooding was!!!
I happened to agree with you in what you're saying. The bottom line is that if Eastland received that exact warning, and at the time that John said, Eastland had the responsibility to get SOMEONE (if not himself) down to those Cabins as soon as that warning came through. Also, whomever came up with brilliant idea that the girls should be in nature the old-fashioned way, without their cellphones, is an idiot. Whether they thought there would be cell service or not. I'll just call him or her "Henry David" (Thoreau.)
As I wrote in another Comment, Eastland's "mental process" is what I suspect. Some Dementias are located in the part of the brain that handles "Executive Judgment" (the ability to make complicated decisions.)
It's not incompetence. It is deliberate, and they are using incompetence as an excuse. You cannot have all these catastrophies caused by incompetence. If that were the case, our country would have failed already by incompetence in every industry. Think about that for more than a moment. Any logical person of sound mind can see the impossible correlation supporting this argument.
Sadly, there’s a huge number of “Dick Eastland’s” running our world today! It starts at the top….and trickles down to incompetence that seems OK these days…..we just need to ‘forgive and forget’!! When someone is tasked to do a job - big or small - that’s what needs to happen. We need only to look at President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to see what two people tasked to care for their respective countries were allowed to almost completely ruin! Top down or bottoms up….same responsibility exists!!!’
No intent to correct, just add. Kakistocracy also means rule by the very worst people, the most corrupt, venal, malicious and greedy in addition to stupid. Or that's what I believe anyway.
How many in government are like Dick, you ask? I don't know a specific percentage number, but my Spidey sense says the majority.
Bureaucrats become lazy, especially long in the tooth in the job. Bureaucrats protect each other and focus shifts from doing the job to securing their jobs.
On the delay, I think there could have been panic, when awakened in the early am hours.
Agreed on several points in the comments, especially why have sleeping facilities in a flood plain in an area known for flash floods? But also, maybe there are too many warnings going out, to the point as mentioned that most of the time nothing happens.
Perhaps warnings need to be more specific. I live in a hurricane zone, and we get many warnings starting days before the storm approaches. After years of this, I pretty well know which ones apply to my location, and which ones I can ignore.
At 1:14am, he was likely sleeping. I know I would have been sleeping, so this is a bit unfair.
I think the real questions to ask might be:
Is this REALLY a good place for a summer camp for any young person in a place where this has happened previously?
If someone realized that, and willingly took the risk, someone of responsibility should have been monitoring the weather situation, as fast action would be needed.
Given that he did respond in 45 min, and there were still many deaths, my conclusion is, that this was NOT A SAFE PLACE for campers of any sort... because even if he had reacted immediately, the logistics of removing many campers late at night in a rain storm over unfamiliar roads with possibly washed out bridges may not have been successful anyway.
The camp should be on high ground, away from a river, at least the area where people are sleeping.
99% of the time these incompetents are government employees. Government jobs attract incompetence because of the job security, pay/pension/time off, lack of oversight, MINIMAL ACCOUNTABILITY!
While my heart goes out to this man and the burden that he will now surely carry (and rightfully so), the unfathomable loss of life is staggering, and any steps that could have been taken, but were not, make this a truly reprehensible situation. For context, my two oldest sons, 6th and 7th grade at the time, attended a rugged wilderness camp in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado 2 summers ago. We had unprecedented rain storms in Denver all that summer, and the weather up in the mountains was even worse.
Part of what made their week at camp so memorable was that they were awakened from their teepees dozens of times over the course of the week, sometimes multiple times during the course of a night‘s sleep, where they were taken to the lightning-safe main structure to wait out the intense thunderstorms.
I’m sure their counselors hated doing it, I’m sure the camp director hated waking them over and over again and dealing with grumpy groggy middle school boys every day, but even though they’ve never had a camper struck by lightning doesn’t mean that they *ever* ignore extreme weather warnings in an extreme weather environment like the mountains. Adults in charge of vulnerable children cannot let their guards down.
Indeed....Camp Mystic was positioned precisely in the path of a flas flood, and should have been evacuated at the first sign of a serious rainstorm, even if that meant evacuating 20 times when it proved unnecessary...Flash floods kill people every year in the West, and can't necessarily be predicted...Better safe than sorry...
The Peter Principle works until it doesn’t. DEI is the Peter Principle on steroids. Where Air India Pilots turn of the fuel pump on take of. Full Idiocracy. A step change above Peter Principle. We used to only see this in Communist countries where all common sense and expertise is murdered.
So now we are seeing an epic clash of 1D Communists and 2D Peter Principle Psychopaths. Both with out morals, ethics or expertise. And both at war with each other and with 3D Common Sense in a battle of The Man in the High Castle play out.
I skimmed through this entire thread. Am I the only person that’s aware that the people involved with Camp Mystic petitioned FEMA to remove those cabins from the floodplain maps. Now why would they do that? One reason would be to lower their insurance and lower their cost. I married into a real estate development family, and this was not incompetence. It was something worse.
I think all the discussion about unprecedented flash flooding this and cloud seating that is truly beside the point. I think those girls died tragically needlessly if they were in the wrong cabin.
In the end — speaking to fellow believers — it’s gonna be a blackeye for “Christian camping.” This camp didn’t even have one of the basic safety certifications , but it sure did have a lot of powerful people with enormous loyalty.
While the Camp Mystic disaster was certainly a failure of competence as noted, I would hope by now you would know that all the other examples were failures by design. Many had significant preplanning exercises, so there was by definition time to plan certain actions. Some of these actions, like denying water to fire fighters or by creating legislation like the PREP Act to ensuring failure, were planned. Sometimes on the fly and sometimes years in advance. With those acts in place, the actions that were executed during these events resulted in tragic outcomes for the victims. Significant benefits for the perpetrators.
Those were not a failure of competence. They were failure by design.
Another question to answer. Why did they put a camp, especially one that is for children, in a flood plain in the first place? Why not a more secure location? Would they build a camp right on the San Andreas fault line also?
Thry built the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant on a known earthquake fault line in Avila Beach, California, and Newsom is keeping it online.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗥𝗡𝗔 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱 𝘃𝗮𝘅 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄....
https://t.co/b6AV3rm8dI
They not only put camps on that fault but public schools as well. I worked for a school district that had approval from the state to do that very thing.
Unbelievable.
Believe it. The human race is amazingly stupid.
It is because we no longer have to think. We are surrounded by a net of humans who won't allow us to fail spectacularly so the lazy and stupid (sorry) survive. Their errors don't kill them although they kill others - similarly look at dead weight and incompetence in large corporations whereas a sole proprietor would be out of business. We were smarter tens of thousands of years ago when ignorant, lazy people were eliminated from the gene pool. Now, we promote them.
I’ve been asking that question since the flood. It was my first question. Is having close access to the river worth the potential danger? I would say no.
Yep, just look at Florida & around the country’s coastlines. The neighborhoods feet from the ocean. Right where hurricanes come annually for Florideans. Crazy. I wish, like everyone else, this camp director had heeded the warning & evacuated the campers down by the river. Hind sight is 20/20.
I said the same thing. Who builds a camp in a freakin flood plain? They cannot even get insurance half the time.
It has been there for 99 years. I don’t know if damming the river in various places over the years may have worsened the flooding. I heard from someone who is working cleanup in the area that Camp Mystic had recently added Mystic 2 and built a dam to do so, and the dam failed. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s what some of the locals were saying. Also heard that one of the boys’ camps nearby had cabins made of wood so they floated, but the cabins at Mystic were concrete block and disintegrated when the floodwaters hit them.
All kinds of things have been built on the San Andreas fault.
Oh yes they do.
With respect, this assessment is a bit unfair. Eastland had 50 years of experience where flash flooding happens every year and usually is not more serious than temporarily impassable roads and puddles inside a door. The Comfort example is not helpful since that was an evacuating bus that drove into high water. The truth is that a tropical storm remnant dropped an unprecedented 100 billion gallons of water in this area in a matter of hours which caused flood waters to rise 30 feet in 45 minutes. Mystic weathered floods just fine for 100 years. What in the weather warning suggested that this was a uniquely dangerous instance?
That which was uniquely dangerous was an incompetent clown running Rainmaker, a company that seeded the already saturated clouds. That was the cause. Hope the families sue and thus insure such companies can no longer operate without adult supervision.
It is entirely possible cloud seeding a tropical storm remnant caused unique flooding. My understanding is that they do this weather modification on government instructions and contracts and don’t just go out there on their own. It is definitely worth investigating.
Very interesting that this same weather manipulation wasnt used in Hawaii to put OUT the Fires in Lahaina? All Intentional Destruction of America. These Dasterds needs judgement,
Or,even ocean water..
It has been investigated by Dane Wigington and expert in Geo Engineering on Jimmy Dores show
https://youtu.be/d8pDqvVhJwU?si=WbcpHbZcVIwDFHoo
That was a red herring and if you watch Dane Wigington on The Jimmy Dore show he will clarify and illuminate you on just what they do. https://youtu.be/d8pDqvVhJwU?si=WbcpHbZcVIwDFHoo
So the mullet man Rainmaker was part of the ruse, a red herring that covered for the real geo-engineering? Okay. Same argument. It was not a quirky event that escaped notice out of incompetence.
Mullet Man originally received 100,000. from that purely evil son of a gun Peter Theil. So Mullet Man follows a farmers request for seeding allegedly and has no clue he is going to be used as the patsy to take the fall. The big and real Geo-Engineering was being held and can be mapped and proven and then was dumped just destroying everything on its path. You are spot on and currently in the States they have the most unheard of 4 or 5 one in a thousand year floods in one month. What are the odds?! The thing is they have used this weapon as that is what it was developed for.
It was used in the Vietnam War.
Let’s take Iran how do you weaken a country before pre-emptive strikes. You destroy their water and food sources.
Fact:
The 2024–25 water year has been described as one of the most challenging in Iran's history, with average rainfall about 45% below normal. Nineteen provinces are in significant drought; for example, Hormozgan in the south reported a 77% decrease in rainfall, and Sistan-Baluchestan a 72% drop. What a lovely world we have with the MIC. The US dominates in this technology and the rest of the world knows you upset the US and don’t comply and you get one of two things an overthrow of leadership or a major alleged natural disaster.
They have the ability to create Earthquakes, Redirect Cyclones Inland, Create Drought Or Flood. Tsunami etc
Apparently according to Dane Whittington that small cloud seeding event by Rainmaker couldn’t have anything to do with the floods. It was two days before and not big enough. He thinks it was a decoy for much larger project that he states emphatically did take place based on his assessment and measurements.
Man made Disaster. Nothing will happen to that CEO . He was just Following orders .
Page 7 of this document has a map of all the creeks and forks and tributaries of the Guadalupe west of Comfort. The terrain is very hilly and full of arroyos. This demonstrates the challenges of predicting high water in the area. Each camp has its own unique risk based on its location.
https://www.hillcountryalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/GRA_HCA_UpperGuadalupe_LitReview.pdf
No, if you followed the weather warnings, they made it quite clear that evacuation was a must. Eastland had his head up his ass. Camp Mystics unbelievably stupid rule of no electronics (cell phone, radios) created a death trap for those kids, I think around 30 Camp Mystic kids died.
The NWS issued a flood warning alert for *Kerr County*. It was not an evacuation order for the camp. The camp management was assessing the situation from the outset, they weren’t just sitting there. They went on 100 years of experience which unfortunately was the wrong call for this particular situation.
You're splitting hairs here, if you receive a flood warning, doesn't it make sense to evacuate? Especially when you're in a flood plain.
You don’t know the area. I went to camp near there, so did my mother and daughter. Flash flood warnings are commonplace and usually mean roads will be impassable for a day or two or some water might come in the door. They don’t mean 30 feet of water in 45 minutes. Mystic had 100 years of experience in that spot. This was a freak occurrence.
There were previous flash floods there, this time there was 30 feet in 45 minutes. You don't consider that to err on the side of caution would have been the better course of action? I'll go back also to that none of the girls had cell phones, if they had, there would have been a commotion going on among the girls as the flood alerts coming in on their phones, the counselor would have been prompted to act much sooner and perhaps evacuate. If it had been my kids, camping in a flood plain, with rain in the forecast, I would have insisted they have cell phones and to stay alert.
There are numerous flash flood warnings in that area yearly. The warning was for the entire county. So the entire county is going to evacuate?
I posted a document with a map of the terrain, maybe you should look at it. There are dozens of camps in those hills beside dozens of tributaries and each one has its own risk.
Just because in 1987 one camp 33 miles downstream had flooding (the bus drove into high water which caused the loss of life) does not mean anything for a camp upstream that had a 100 year history of no problems. Why is this so hard to understand?
The camp management was up and listening and discussing the warnings when they came out at like 1:14 am. It wasn’t that they weren’t aware of the warning. It’s that they thought, and had no reason not to think, that it was like all the other useless warnings they get continually during the summer.
If you want to assign blame assign it to the warning system. It is natural to be upset at such a tragedy and wonder what could have been done. In fact it was a freak occurrence.
They need mechanical gauges upstream from each camp or rv park or neighborhood that are attached to a dedicated siren that warns particular areas. A county wide weather warning is ineffective.
I live in an area with really bad weather. Our meteorologists broadcast radar warnings and have trained spotters calling in. We get
useful warnings on our phones. Maybe something like that would work. What they have doesn’t work.
Did the camp director save his own life?
He drowned in his SUV along with 3 campers.
Thank you. Absolutely dreadful.
Yes horrific
Was the Director Dick Eastland?
Yes
It is completely unreasonable to expect anyone to get out of bed at 1:00 AM.
It’s not a joke.
I've heard of people who get themselves out of bed at night just to take a leak. Silly.
???????
ALWAYS error on the side of caution. Especially when there are other lives involved.
It is easy to say with hindsight if only they had done this or that then they would have survived. Eastland had 50 years of experience to go on including probably many years of flash flood warnings that turned out to be nothing.
I will say putting the younger campers by the river is something I wouldn’t do, but their cabin was overtopped in 10 minutes at 4;30 am so I doubt older campers would have survived.
The answer (to me) is mechanical gauges upstream coupled with sirens or warnings for specific areas. There are dozens of camps on dozens of waterways and each has a unique risk.
He died trying to rescue campers.
That is sad, and I am thankful he did that instead of running. It doesn't negate incompetence, but it does show courage and honor in placing the children's lives above his own. I abjectly apologize to his family if they read this for my wrong assumption that he survived. Even heroes make mistakes, but they - as did he - often die correcting them. I feel ashamed, as well I should and will delete my insensitive comment, hoping his family hasn't seen it.
I agree, and will do the same.
I live in Texas and we get alerts all the time and 8 times out of 10, they are inaccurate. I think the judgment of Eastland is too harsh considering his age, the time of night and his long tenure. We don’t know what kind of mental process he went through to figure out what to do. I do agree with the other disasters being sinister though.
Yes! We literally get alerts for flash flooding almost every time it rains here in Texas and very rarely does the rain result in any real danger to the public- like massive flooding etc. I think the Texas disaster is being unfairly assessed by those who are missing basic facts about the volume and speed of the rain/flooding, the inaccuracy of the weather predictions for this day, (which meant they received a serious warning ONLY ONCE it had already began flooding), and finally- how unprecedented this amount of flooding was!!!
I think what's being incompetently assessed is all these boys crying wolf.
There are no consequences for false alarms. But there should be.
He had a job. He was entrusted with the safety of the people in the camp. Either evil or incompetent.
But he had no way to know that a young psychopath was seeding the clouds, which would bring about the catastrophe.
Who knows?
I happened to agree with you in what you're saying. The bottom line is that if Eastland received that exact warning, and at the time that John said, Eastland had the responsibility to get SOMEONE (if not himself) down to those Cabins as soon as that warning came through. Also, whomever came up with brilliant idea that the girls should be in nature the old-fashioned way, without their cellphones, is an idiot. Whether they thought there would be cell service or not. I'll just call him or her "Henry David" (Thoreau.)
As I wrote in another Comment, Eastland's "mental process" is what I suspect. Some Dementias are located in the part of the brain that handles "Executive Judgment" (the ability to make complicated decisions.)
It is completely unreasonable to expect a middle aged man to complete any sort of "Mental process" at 1:00AM.
Nonsense, at 72 if I were Eastland and had received the flood alert, all those kids would have been out of there.
Sarcasm
It's not incompetence. It is deliberate, and they are using incompetence as an excuse. You cannot have all these catastrophies caused by incompetence. If that were the case, our country would have failed already by incompetence in every industry. Think about that for more than a moment. Any logical person of sound mind can see the impossible correlation supporting this argument.
Sadly, there’s a huge number of “Dick Eastland’s” running our world today! It starts at the top….and trickles down to incompetence that seems OK these days…..we just need to ‘forgive and forget’!! When someone is tasked to do a job - big or small - that’s what needs to happen. We need only to look at President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to see what two people tasked to care for their respective countries were allowed to almost completely ruin! Top down or bottoms up….same responsibility exists!!!’
It’s called “kakistocracy”:
Rule by idiots. Apparently a symptom of late stage empire. Or maybe just life imitating art: Idiocracy.
No intent to correct, just add. Kakistocracy also means rule by the very worst people, the most corrupt, venal, malicious and greedy in addition to stupid. Or that's what I believe anyway.
Even more accurate.
BTW, life doesn't just imitate art. It imitates BAD art, like Idiocracy. LOL.
How many in government are like Dick, you ask? I don't know a specific percentage number, but my Spidey sense says the majority.
Bureaucrats become lazy, especially long in the tooth in the job. Bureaucrats protect each other and focus shifts from doing the job to securing their jobs.
One of human nature's annoying features.
On the delay, I think there could have been panic, when awakened in the early am hours.
Agreed on several points in the comments, especially why have sleeping facilities in a flood plain in an area known for flash floods? But also, maybe there are too many warnings going out, to the point as mentioned that most of the time nothing happens.
Perhaps warnings need to be more specific. I live in a hurricane zone, and we get many warnings starting days before the storm approaches. After years of this, I pretty well know which ones apply to my location, and which ones I can ignore.
A review of the warnings showed they were specific
At 1:14am, he was likely sleeping. I know I would have been sleeping, so this is a bit unfair.
I think the real questions to ask might be:
Is this REALLY a good place for a summer camp for any young person in a place where this has happened previously?
If someone realized that, and willingly took the risk, someone of responsibility should have been monitoring the weather situation, as fast action would be needed.
Given that he did respond in 45 min, and there were still many deaths, my conclusion is, that this was NOT A SAFE PLACE for campers of any sort... because even if he had reacted immediately, the logistics of removing many campers late at night in a rain storm over unfamiliar roads with possibly washed out bridges may not have been successful anyway.
The camp should be on high ground, away from a river, at least the area where people are sleeping.
If someone sends me a txt message at 1:14am, I will likely get it sometime the next day...
a rational take.
The fact that it had been, and was raining, when the alert came through, in sheets should have kept him up and alert.
99% of the time these incompetents are government employees. Government jobs attract incompetence because of the job security, pay/pension/time off, lack of oversight, MINIMAL ACCOUNTABILITY!
good post. the vast majority of gov employees are there for the pay, perks and retirement. And doing as little work as possible.
While my heart goes out to this man and the burden that he will now surely carry (and rightfully so), the unfathomable loss of life is staggering, and any steps that could have been taken, but were not, make this a truly reprehensible situation. For context, my two oldest sons, 6th and 7th grade at the time, attended a rugged wilderness camp in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado 2 summers ago. We had unprecedented rain storms in Denver all that summer, and the weather up in the mountains was even worse.
Part of what made their week at camp so memorable was that they were awakened from their teepees dozens of times over the course of the week, sometimes multiple times during the course of a night‘s sleep, where they were taken to the lightning-safe main structure to wait out the intense thunderstorms.
I’m sure their counselors hated doing it, I’m sure the camp director hated waking them over and over again and dealing with grumpy groggy middle school boys every day, but even though they’ve never had a camper struck by lightning doesn’t mean that they *ever* ignore extreme weather warnings in an extreme weather environment like the mountains. Adults in charge of vulnerable children cannot let their guards down.
Indeed....Camp Mystic was positioned precisely in the path of a flas flood, and should have been evacuated at the first sign of a serious rainstorm, even if that meant evacuating 20 times when it proved unnecessary...Flash floods kill people every year in the West, and can't necessarily be predicted...Better safe than sorry...
The Peter Principle works until it doesn’t. DEI is the Peter Principle on steroids. Where Air India Pilots turn of the fuel pump on take of. Full Idiocracy. A step change above Peter Principle. We used to only see this in Communist countries where all common sense and expertise is murdered.
So now we are seeing an epic clash of 1D Communists and 2D Peter Principle Psychopaths. Both with out morals, ethics or expertise. And both at war with each other and with 3D Common Sense in a battle of The Man in the High Castle play out.
mRNA induced prion disease, dementia is settling in really well, as planned 50 years ago
Brainfog
Brain fog has a cause, amyloid protein plaques and CJD?
I skimmed through this entire thread. Am I the only person that’s aware that the people involved with Camp Mystic petitioned FEMA to remove those cabins from the floodplain maps. Now why would they do that? One reason would be to lower their insurance and lower their cost. I married into a real estate development family, and this was not incompetence. It was something worse.
I think all the discussion about unprecedented flash flooding this and cloud seating that is truly beside the point. I think those girls died tragically needlessly if they were in the wrong cabin.
In the end — speaking to fellow believers — it’s gonna be a blackeye for “Christian camping.” This camp didn’t even have one of the basic safety certifications , but it sure did have a lot of powerful people with enormous loyalty.
there is some thought that this might be deliberate. Killing Christian girls.
While the Camp Mystic disaster was certainly a failure of competence as noted, I would hope by now you would know that all the other examples were failures by design. Many had significant preplanning exercises, so there was by definition time to plan certain actions. Some of these actions, like denying water to fire fighters or by creating legislation like the PREP Act to ensuring failure, were planned. Sometimes on the fly and sometimes years in advance. With those acts in place, the actions that were executed during these events resulted in tragic outcomes for the victims. Significant benefits for the perpetrators.
Those were not a failure of competence. They were failure by design.