Camp Mystic reportedly waited an hour to evacuate after warnings of ‘life-threatening' Texas floods
Executive Director Richard 'Dick' Eastland, 70, along with his wife, had been in charge of the beloved all-girls Christian summer camp in Hunt, Texas since the 1980s.
It's located directly in the flood zone. But when the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning for Kerr County at 1:14 a.m. on July 4, warning of 'life-threatening flash flooding' near the Guadalupe River, little direction was given by the leadership of the camp.
Eastland did not order evacuations until 2:30 a.m., by which time torrential rains were already falling and the river was rapidly rising, according to family spokesman Jeff Carr, as reported by The Washington Post.
Instead, the director first used walkie-talkies to coordinate with his family members, many of whom worked at the camp, to 'assess the situation.'
Interviews, detailed in the Post, with survivors and emergency personnel, describe a chaotic and delayed response that left teenage counselors scrambling in the dark as floodwaters surged through the camp, which lacked reliable cell service and had no backup power for its loudspeaker system once electricity went out.
The result was catastrophe. Twenty-seven campers and counselors died. Eastland himself drowned while trying to rescue some of the youngest girls at the camp.
'There should have been immediate action (by the leaders),' said Serena Aldrich, a lawyer, a parent and former camper whose two daughters survived.
'They should have been paying attention to those warnings and evacuated the camp,' she added. 'The flooding is not a new thing. I don't know if it's ever been to epic proportions like that, but ignoring the warnings doesn't make a lot of sense to me.'
Camp Mystic had been under a flood watch earlier that evening, but the 1:14 a.m. 'life threatening' alert, which came without an official evacuation order, marked a significant escalation.
The National Weather Service does not have the authority to mandate evacuations. That responsibility falls to local officials. Kerr County authorities, however, did not use emergency alert systems to warn residents until more than two days later, The Post reported.
Whether Camp Mystic called 911 is still unclear. The local fire chief told the outlet he never received a call for help from the camp.
By the time the camp began evacuations, the Guadalupe River had already started its historic surge, eventually cresting at 37.5 feet, nearly a foot above its previous record.
Counselors were forced to make life-or-death decisions in waist- and chest-high water. They carried barefoot children through the darkness to higher ground while listening to cries for help from cabins closer the river.
Some girls were eventually rescued by helicopter. Others clung to trees or took shelter on rooftops for hours.
Camp staff did not officially contact most parents, until later that morning, according to emails obtained by the Post. The first communication from the camp to most parents came at 11:28 a.m.
By that time, many of the parents had grown hysterical over the harrowing images being shared on the news and across social media.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
How do airports try to prevent bird collisions? It's a never-ending job
My tone wavered between enthusiasm and concern. 'Is that a great black-backed gull,' I asked. It was a cold December morning, and I was cruising along the interior roads of Boston's Logan international airport in a white pickup truck. At the wheel was Jeff Turner, who, among other duties, oversees efforts to control wildlife at the airport, including making sure that errant gulls and other birds don't stray into flight paths and cause an accident. He glanced toward the harbor and confirmed that a lone great black-backed was indeed mixed in with a few herring gulls. There is nothing remarkable about spotting this species on the shorelines of Boston. But it sure is fun to gawk at them. They're gluttonous omnivores that will devour rats, rabbits and rotting garbage, and they can be obnoxiously loud and territorial. They're also enormous: the largest of all gull species with wingspans that top out at 5.5ft (1.7 metres), a feathered Goliath that no pilot wants to see perched near a runway. We spent a moment admiring it while commercial flights taxied behind us and roared overhead. 'When you see one sitting next to a herring gull, it's crazy just how much bigger it is,' Turner said. 'Surprisingly, we don't see a lot of black-backed strikes. The majority of our gull strikes are herring gulls.' With that, he parked the truck, walked over to a silver-barreled air cannon set up on a small platform in a patch of grass, and let it rip. The whompfff of the blast made me flinch and sent the gulls scattering. We got back in the truck and rolled onward, looking for more loitering birds to harass. Every day, birds and airplanes collide. The Federal Aviation Administration recorded approximately 19,000 such incidents across nearly 800 US airports in 2023. In total, those strikes cost airlines an estimated $461m. The issue has been in the headlines in recent months following a string of high-profile bird strikes. Korean officials found the remains of Baikal teals in both engines of the Jeju Air flight that crashed in December and killed 179 people (the extent to which the animals contributed to the crash remains under investigation). In February of this year, a hawk obliterated the nose of an Airbus A320 in Brazil. Then in March, a FedEx cargo plane made a fiery emergency landing in Newark, New Jersey, after one of its engines ingested a bird and started spewing flames. Two weeks later, a bird rocketed through the windscreen of a private airplane in California, injuring the passenger and precipitating another emergency landing. Turner's team, which includes five technicians and a contracted United States Department of Agriculture wildlife biologist, is responsible for minimizing the likelihood of such calamities at Logan. They use pyrotechnics and air cannons to scare away birds and do whatever they can to make the landscape as unappealing as possible – be it cutting the grass, draining standing water or ripping up berry-bearing bushes that might attract flocks of peckish blackbirds. When all else fails, the technicians have shotguns in their trucks. 'We always go heavy on harassment,' Turner explained. 'And then the last resort is lethal.' The goal, after all, isn't to kill birds. It's to keep them away from airplanes. That's a daunting task at Logan, where an average of 1,200 flights come and go each day. The airport sprawls across 2,400 acres (971 hectares) with water on three sides. During spring and fall migration, managing birds here is like defending against swarm warfare. 'The fact that we're surrounded by water is a huge challenge … If you're [a bird] flying down the coastline and you see this,' Turner said, gesturing to long stretches of grass on one side and the shallows of Boston harbor on the other, 'it's a whole different habitat.' Turner has worked at Logan since 2010. The most unexpected animal encounter during that time was with a ticked-off otter whose powerful bite left 'five or six holes in my hand', he said. Coyotes make occasional appearances in the winter, as do snowy owls, for which Turner depends on a skilled volunteer who carefully traps and relocates them. On a few occasions, deer have turned up near the runways: 'The most incredible part,' Turner said, is that the deer swam to the airport from the surrounding harbor islands. A breezy conversationalist, Turner's eyes never stopped scanning the perimeter of the airport. He pointed out brants, common eiders, a merlin, and bucket loads of gulls. As we drove on, we saw Canada geese congregating near the water and a few dozen European starlings zipping around further inland. Canada geese are famously associated with bird strikes thanks to the heroics of Capt Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, who in January 2009 safely landed an Airbus A320 on the Hudson river after hitting a flock of geese in what's been dubbed the 'Miracle on the Hudson'. But European starlings can be every bit as dangerous. 'They just undulate everywhere and when you harass them they split and come back together,' Turner said. Starling murmurations are such a threat that Turner's team erected a trap made of wood and chicken wire with a one-way entry point at the top and food and water below. Pity the technicians who have to 'dispatch' the trapped birds by snapping their necks. If that sounds grim, it may help to consider the tragic history of European starlings at Logan. For several years prior to meeting Turner, I had been researching a book on Roxie Laybourne, a scientist who pioneered the field of forensic ornithology while working at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Her career took an unusual turn on 4 October 1960, when a flight taking off from Logan hit an enormous flock of birds and crashed into the water, killing 62 people. It was unprecedented and terrifying. Investigators needed to know the type of bird that caused the crash, so they sent some of the remains down to the Smithsonian. Laybourne and her boss sorted through the pieces and found enough feathers to confirm that starlings were to blame. In the following years, bird strikes caused more fatal airplane crashes: in 1962, tundra swans downed a commercial flight over Maryland, killing all 17 people on board; and in 1964, astronaut Theodore Freeman died after his training jet careened into a flock of snow geese near Houston. To establish new safety standards, engineers and regulators needed to know what types of birds were being hit most frequently and how much those birds weighed, so they turned to Laybourne for help. Using her microscope and the Smithsonian's vast collection of research specimens, she developed ways of identifying birds by analyzing the microscopic structures of feathers. She went on to apply her skills to criminal investigations, including murder and poaching cases, but more than anything focused on aviation, identifying the remains of more than 10,000 airplane-struck birds. Nowadays, most airlines voluntarily report bird strikes and send the splattered animal bits they recover to the Smithsonian's Feather Identification Lab, run by Carla Dove, who trained under Laybourne. The lab works with the FAA, the US air force and the US navy, and identified more than 11,000 bird-strike remains last year, dozens of which of which were collected in Boston. Most bird strikes cause no damage whatsoever. But every once in a while, things go awfully wrong and that's what keeps Turner on his toes. His job is a never-ending, always-evolving risk-benefit analysis in which mundane tasks such as trimming the grass can be a catch-22. Whenever the mowers go out in the summer, he explained, huge amounts of barn swallows come swooping in for the buffet of insects that get kicked up in the process. 'We don't want the bird strikes, but we gotta cut the grass,' he added, playing up the damned-if-you-do nature of it all. In this line of work, even the most well-intentioned actions can have undesirable consequences. He offered up the example of Boston harbor, once one of the most polluted harbors in the country. After decades of clean-up efforts and programs to reduce sewage overflows, the water is swimmable and it's a legitimate environmental success story. While Turner loves seeing such progress, the wildlife manager in him laments the fact that better water quality means more productive shellfish beds, which in turn means more gulls. 'The gulls have adapted to it,' he said, pointing to shards of oyster shells on the side of the road. 'They're taking them out at low tide, dropping them on the pavement or on the runways, and cracking the shells open to have a nice little feast. It's a pain.' With air traffic increasing at Logan and pretty much everywhere else, Turner is a realist who knows that bird strikes are a problem that cannot be stopped, only mitigated. 'It's inevitable that something's going to happen,' he said. 'And we just do everything we can do to make sure it's not going to be one of those catastrophic strikes.' Chris Sweeney is the author of The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne, coming 22 July from Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Like something you see in a movie': Trump cuts stir fears of more pipeline ruptures
On a clear February evening in 2020, a smell of rotten eggs started to waft over the small town of Satartia, Mississippi, followed by a green-tinged cloud. A load roar could be heard near the highway that passes the town. Soon, nearby residents started to feel dizzy, some even passed out or lay on the ground shaking, unable to breathe. Cars, inexplicably, cut out, their drivers leaving them abandoned with the doors open on the highway. 'It was like something you see in a movie, like a zombie apocalypse,' said Jerry Briggs, a fire coordinator from nearby Warren county who was tasked with knocking on the doors of residents to get them to evacuate. Briggs and most of his colleagues were wearing breathing apparatus – one deputy who didn't do so almost collapsed and had to be carried away. Unbeknown to residents and emergency responders, a pipeline carrying carbon dioxide near Satartia had ruptured and its contents were gushing out, robbing oxygen from people and internal combustion engines in cars alike. 'We had no idea what it was,' said Briggs, who moved towards the deafening noise of the pipeline leak with a colleague, their vehicle spluttering, when they saw a car containing three men, unconscious and barely breathing. 'We just piled them on top of each other and got them out because it's debatable if they survived if we waited,' said Briggs. Ultimately, the men survived and were hospitalized along with around 45 other people. More than 200 people were evacuated. 'It was like we were all being smothered,' said Jack Willingham, director of emergency management in Yazoo county, where Satartia is situated. 'It was a pretty damn crazy day,' The near-fatal disaster was a spur to Joe Biden's administration to, for the first time, create a rule demanding a high standard of safety for the transport of carbon dioxide, a small but growing ingredient of pipelines increasingly captured from drilling sites and power plants. 'There's been a lot of concern about safety among states that permit CO2 pipelines,' said Tristan Brown, who was acting administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) until January. 'Stronger standards like the ones we drafted last year have the dual benefit of addressing permitting concerns while also improving safety for the public.' But shortly before the new safety regulations were due to come into force early this year, Donald Trump's new administration swiftly killed them off. A crackdown on gas leaks from pipelines was also pared back. This was followed by an exodus of senior officials from PHMSA, which oversees millions of miles of US pipelines. Five top leaders, including the head of the office of pipeline safety, have departed amid Trump's push to shrink the federal workforce. Broader staff cuts have hit the regulator, too, with PHMSA preparing for 612 employees in the coming year, down from 658 last year. There are currently 174 pipeline inspectors within this workforce, PHMSA said, which is 30% less than the number of inspectors Congress required it to have when authorizing the agency's budget in 2020. These 174 inspectors have the task of scrutinizing 3.3 million miles of pipe across the US, or around 19,000 miles per inspector. The indiscriminate nature of cuts at PHMSA 'has real world consequences in terms of undermining the basic foundations of safety for the public,' Brown said. 'A lot of expertise has left and that is worrying,' said one departed PHSMA staffer. 'The attitude from Doge [the 'department of government efficiency'] was 'your job is meaningless, go and work in the private sector.' Many people have thought they can't go through this for four years.' America has more miles of pipeline – carrying oil, propane, gas and other materials – than it does in federal highways and a federal regulator that was already overstretched. Brown said typically just one or two people have the responsibility of inspecting America's transported nuclear waste while a mere dozen staffers have to oversee more than 170 liquified natural gas plants. Each state has its own pipeline regulatory system and inspectors, too, but PHMSA is responsible for writing and enforcing national standards and is often the one to prosecute violations by any of the 3,000 businesses that currently operate pipelines. However, enforcement actions have dropped steeply under the Trump administration, which has initiated just 40 new cases this year, compared to 197 in all of 2024. 'All of these things will contribute to an increase in failures,' said Bill Caram, executive director of the nonprofit Pipeline Safety Trust. 'A strong regulator helps prevent awful tragedies and I worry we could see increased incidents now. The drop in enforcement is very troubling.' 'Everyone at PHMSA is focused on safety, there's not a lot of fat to trim, so it's hard to imagine that any reduction in force won't impact its ability to fulfill its duties. I can't believe they were ever prepared to lose so many people at once.' In some contexts, US pipelines can be viewed as very safe. A few dozen people are killed or injured each year from pipeline malfunctions but the alternatives to moving around vast quantities of toxic or flammable liquids and gases aren't risk-free. Trains can come off their tracks and spill their loads, as seen in East Palestine, Ohio, while the death toll on American roads from accidents is typically about 40,000 people a year. 'There is some super duper bad stuff that happens on the interstates,' said Briggs. Still, as Caram points out, there is a significant pipeline incident almost every day in the US, ranging from globs of oil spilling onto farmland to raging fireballs from ignited gas. Many of the pipelines snaking under Americans' feet are aging and need replacement, which can lead to failures. There has been a worrying uptick in deaths from pipeline accidents recently, too, with 30 people killed across 2023 and 2024, the most fatalities over a two-year period since 2010/11. 'This is not the time to look at deregulatory efforts, this is not time to look to save money and deregulate,' Caram said. 'The overall state of pipeline safety is really languishing with poor performance. We are not making good progress and we need stronger regulations.' A PHSMA spokesman said the agency is 'laser-focused on its mission of protecting people and the environment while unleashing American energy safely' and is in the process of appointing 'well-qualified individuals' to fill the departed senior officials. 'PHMSA has initiated more pipeline-related rule making actions since the beginning of this administration than in the entire four years of the preceding administration,' the spokesman added. 'Each of these rule makings represents an opportunity for us to promote pipeline safety by modernizing our code and encouraging innovation and the use of new technology.' The agency spokesman added that pipeline firm Denbury, now owned by Exxon, paid $2.8m in civil penalties for its regulatory violations in Satartia and agreed to take corrective actions. PHMSA also warned other operators to monitor the movement of earth and rock, to avoid a repeat of the Satartia incident where sodden soils shifted following days of rain and crunched into the pipeline, severing it. The leak was only confirmed after an emergency responder called Denbury to ascertain what happened, more than 40 minutes after the rupture, according to the PHMSA investigation. Communications between the company and the emergency services has improved since, according to both Briggs and Willingham. Denbury was contacted for comment. Today, Sartartia bears few visible scars. The pipeline is obscured from passing view by trees and blankets of kudzu, the invasive vine. The town's sleepy, tree-lined streets contains a micro town hall, as big as a tool shed, a couple of small churches, a single shuttered store. On a recent summer day a single person was outside, contentedly cutting the grass, as if that harrowing day in 2020 was a surreal dream. 'We will see how it goes with the changes, I hope it doesn't affect the safety we've worked so hard to get,' Willingham said of the cuts at PHMSA. 'We don't want a day like we had in Satartia again. In 35 years in emergency service I have seen some crazy stuff but that was a wild, wild day.'
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Urgent recall issued for beloved summer essential sold at Costco and Target after multiple children die
An urgent recall has been issued for about five million above-ground swimming pools after a design flaw was linked to nine child drownings. The recall covers 48-inch and taller pools made by Bestway, Intex, and Polygroup that use compression straps. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warns that when wrapped around the pool, the straps can create a foothold, allowing young children to climb in even when the ladder has been removed. The affected Bestway and Coleman models were sold between 2008 and 2024. Select Intex models purchased between 2002 and 2012, and Polygroup above-ground pools, which were sold between 2006 and 2025. CPSC investigators say the design flaw has been linked to the deaths of nine children, ages 22 months to 3 years, between 2007 and 2022. At least three additional incidents were reported in 2011 and 2012 in which children gained access to the pools. All of the pools range from $400 to over $1,000, and were sold at various retailers like Target, Lowe's, Sam's Club, Costco and Big Lots. Owners of these pools are advised to contact Bestway, Intex or Polygroup to receive a repair kit. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission believes a malfunction was a factor in 9 deaths of young children The repair kit includes a rope to attach to each of the pool's vertical support poles. The rope will also wrap around the pool just like the product's compression strap. Once a consumer secures the rope, they are advised to cut and remove the original compression strap. For maximum safety, the CSPC suggests adults insure children cannot access the pool unattended or keep the pool drained until the kit is installed. The above-ground pools join a small string of summer essentials that have been recalled this year. Ready-to-eat chicken sausages that can be found at barbecues were recalled this month over fears of throat lacerations. The sausages were sold at Walmart and other retailers in 26 states, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. As of now, no injuries have been reported. The Endless Pools company also issued a massive recall on Manual Retractable Security Pool Covers due to drowning and entrapment hazards. Each affected cover could potentially leave a gap of over 4.5 inches between the cover roller and pool surface when incorrectly installed, which could be hazardous for young children. Some of the highest recalls of the year so far have been for automobiles, including one for 850,000 Ford vehicles in the US. The recent recall was made due to the potential failure of low-pressure fuel pumps, which can cause engine stalls. The recall came around the same time the Detroit-based manufacturer broke the record for the highest number of recalls in the US this year. Forest River came in second with 21, while Chrysler, Volkswagen, General Motors, Honda, and Mercedes-Benz followed with 18, 17, 15, 14 and 13 respectively. Other massive vehicle recalls include nearly 21,000 Jaguar Land Rovers over a front passenger airbag defect and over 480,000 Nissan automobiles over manufacturing defects in bearings.
