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.
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.
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...
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!
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.
I have learned in life that most leaders are incompetent. They speak well, present themselves well, but have little substance upstairs. It always amazed me how people got in these responsible positions.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
Dr Bhakdi has a study confirming destruction of brain cells by biosynthetic modified RNA injections, yes.
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.
I have learned in life that most leaders are incompetent. They speak well, present themselves well, but have little substance upstairs. It always amazed me how people got in these responsible positions.
amazed me too.
DON'T build in flood plains......ESPECIALLY NOT IN FLASH FLOOD PLAINS!