Latest news with #TomMoser
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
The long road to tragedy at the Texas girls camp where floods claimed 27 lives
Investigators of the catastrophic Hill Country flooding in Texas may never be able to pinpoint a precise moment that sealed the fate of 27 young girls, teenage counselors and staff who perished after a wall of water surged through Camp Mystic on the banks of the Guadalupe River. But perhaps no bigger clue can be found than the account of an otherwise unremarkable and sparsely attended meeting of Kerr county commissioners in March 2018. Members waited with anticipation for news of an application they submitted the previous year for a grant from the state of Texas to help pay for a comprehensive new flood warning system along the Guadalupe. The county's unreliable old network of gauges and sensors, installed following flooding in 1987 that killed 10 children trying to flee a waterside church camp, had been inactive since 1999. Commissioners were chasing a $1m slice of federal funding made newly available to the state after a succession of flood disasters, including Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Now-retired commissioner Tom Moser brought bad news, noting 'about eight different counties' were selected, but 'they didn't select us,' according to minutes of the meeting still viewable online. Tom Pollard, the county judge at the time, was incredulous. 'They prioritized us lower?' he asked, the county's many low-lying and therefore vulnerable youth summer camps immediately adjacent to the Guadalupe uppermost in his mind. 'They did,' Moser replied solemnly. Without that funding from the state, the project foundered. No widespread gauge system was ever set up that would have given early warning of a life-threatening torrent of water further up the river; no sirens ever installed that would have warned Camp Mystic residents that their lives were in peril and they needed to get out immediately. The investigation will look at other missteps and lost opportunities along the way that might have brought a different outcome at the 99-year-old Christian-themed, all-girls camp that served as a joyous rite of passage for generations of young Texans. Prominent among them will be this week's revelation that the camp owner and director Dick Eastland, who lost his own life trying to ferry a group of his youngest campers to safety as the river rose towards a peak height of 37.5ft, waited more than an hour to issue an evacuation order after receiving a severe flood warning on his phone at 1.14am on 4 July. Yet it is to the eternal regret of Moser, a former senior Nasa engineer who had studied flood monitoring and alert systems installed in other nearby counties, that money was never found or spent, either then or later, to replace or upgrade a broken mechanism born from a near-identical tragedy for the sole purpose of saving lives in the future. 'Not having the funds to accomplish it was not very satisfying to me but we tried,' Moser told NPR. 'That's all we could do. We didn't have the resources in the county operating budget to do that.' Moser, who did not return a message from the Guardian seeking further comment, had advocated for sirens, a proposal dropped from the state grant application when it became clear some residents and commissioners opposed them. 'If sirens were there, clearly people would have known about it. Would it have saved everybody? I don't think so. This was an event that's probably one chance in a million,' he told the radio network. At Camp Mystic, like elsewhere in the county, residents were reliant on an outdated and patchwork early warning system of alerts. Some were from the National Weather Service (NWS), which Eastland's family concedes he did receive. Other messages came from local authorities, some sent only after an inexplicable delay, which others along the Guadalupe's banks say they did not see in any case. Inside the camp, with water rising fast, especially around dormitories closest to the river where the youngest campers, mostly aged eight and nine, were sleeping, there was chaos. Many of the teenage counselors left in charge of the dormitories were left to make instant life-or-death decisions on their own, having lost contact with adult supervisors. According to two counselors interviewed in the days following the disaster, campers were not allowed to bring mobile phones, and the counselors were made to surrender theirs, leaving them cut off from any emergency alerts. Eastland, who had run the camp with his family since the 1980s and was a past director of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority that pressed for the original warning and alert system, was familiar with the danger of flash flooding from heavy rain. 'I'm sure there will be other drownings,' Eastland told the Austin American-Statesman in 1990, reported by CNN. 'People don't heed the warnings.' In a Washington Post report that contained harrowing first-hand testimony from girls who were there, parents of some who were rescued from Camp Mystic said it was Eastland and his staff who ignored warnings on the morning of the disaster. Also under scrutiny will be why Eastland made, and was granted, repeated applications to remove dozens of Camp Mystic buildings from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's 100-year flood map, which allowed the camp to operate and expand in a known risk area. A review by the Associated Press found that 15 of at least 30 exempted buildings were at the Camp Mystic Guadalupe site where most, if not all of the campers and counselors lost their lives. Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications at First Street, a climate risk assessment and modelling company, said the dormitories were in a known flood zone, which records show had been swamped numerous times in the camp's near century of existence. 'People that ran the camp had the ability to understand that the risk was close by, the risk was in the area, and maybe adapt the buildings. And there was no action there,' he said. 'In fact there were letters of map amendments that were submitted instead.' But Porter said it was hard to place blame on any single person or entity: 'A lot of that is just our overall risk psyche and understanding of what risk looks like, our expectation that these really rare events aren't going to affect us and they're not going to be as bad as we think they're going to be. 'The way we treat climate risk and flood risk in the country is really that, you know, if it happens, it'll be something we'll be able to rebuild, recover, and then it won't happen again for 100 years.' The Guardian was unable to reach anybody at Camp Mystic for comment. Donna Gable Hatch, a writer and former staff editor at the Kerrville Daily Times, said she believed lives would have been saved at Camp Mystic with an early warning system, but city and county officials were not responsible for its absence. 'If the funds had been made available in a timely and adequate manner, this catastrophe might have unfolded differently. But too often, those at the helm of small towns must wait for permission, wait for funding, wait for bureaucracy to catch up to reality,' she wrote in a guest editorial for her former employer. 'To accuse local leaders of negligence is to completely misunderstand who they are and what this place means. In Kerr county, heartbreak isn't abstract. It has a name. A face. It's a neighbor, a classmate, a church member or a childhood friend. 'The truth will come out. In time, we'll trace the chain of failure back to where it truly began – not in Kerrville, but in the halls of distant agencies who failed to act with the urgency that rural lives deserved.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Texas county where campers died was denied money to boost warning systems
Nearly a decade before catastrophic flooding in south Texas killed at least 95 people, including 27 girls and counselors from a beloved summer camp, the state's Division of Emergency Management denied requests from the county where the camp is held for a $1 million grant to improve its flood warning system. Summer camps were top of mind during county leaders' discussions of the project, meeting minutes show. Then-County Commissioner Tom Moser envisioned designating point people at each camp who would monitor a website and alert camp counselors and attendees if evacuation was needed. The Division of Emergency Management did not answer USA TODAY's specific questions about why the county's applications were rejected. "As we are in the middle of ongoing response operations, our priority is life-safety of the public right now," chief communications officer Wes Rapaport said in an email. Spokespeople for Kerr County did not respond to requests for comment. Phone and email messages attempting to reach Moser and Dub Thomas, Kerr County's deputy sheriff and emergency management coordinator, went unreturned. In June 2016, President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in Texas after torrential rains killed 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in the state's southeast corner. It unlocked more than $100 million in money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to both clean up the damage and help communities across the state prepare for the next disaster. Kerr County, part of a region whose rivers' and creeks' high flooding potential earned it the nickname 'Flash Flood Alley,' was among the communities that sought preventative funding. It asked for $1 million to build a flood warning system that would have upgraded 20 water gauge systems, added new water level sensors and posts, and created software and a website to distribute that information to the public in real-time. More: Hard-hit areas in Texas face new flooding risks; death toll climbs to 104: Live updates More: A flood killed his entire family in 2015. Now, he's joined search efforts in Texas. Although some nearby jurisdictions, such as Comal County, built siren systems to alert residents to floods, Moser noted that many people in Kerr County opposed sirens. A website, he hoped, would fill that void. 'We can do all the water level monitoring we want, but if we don't get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it,' he said at a January 2017 meeting, days before the application deadline. Under FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Assistance program, the federal government can distribute money for preventive measures to states that request it. Cities, counties and nonprofits then apply to their states for a piece of it. In Texas, the Division of Emergency Management decides which applications to approve. The Texas Division of Emergency Management denied Kerr County's 2017 application, meeting minutes show. Kerr County applied again in 2018, when more federal funding became available after Hurricane Harvey. But meeting minutes indicate that Texas' emergency authority again did not approve it. Kerr County has long used software called CodeRed to notify residents about floods, fires and other emergencies via cell phone. In 2020, county leaders voted to expand CodeRed by integrating it with a FEMA system, which would enable it to alert people passing through the area, even if they don't have the local CodeRed app. The expansion, however, was just an expansion of the old system – not the new system with upgraded gauges, new sensors and a public website that the county desperately wanted. 'We've been trying to get a new Flood Warning System here,' Thomas, the county's emergency management coordinator, said at the November 2020 meeting. 'We just haven't been able to do it.' This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas turned down Kerr County plea for money for better flood warnings
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Texas officials long feared for riverbank summer camps. A warning system was rejected as too expensive
Officials in Kerr County, Texas, had long been concerned about kids' summer camps along the banks of the Guadalupe River, an area known as 'flash flood alley.' The camps in the idyllic Texas Hill Country, where children from the surrounding big cities of San Antonio, Austin and Fredericksburg came to fish, horseback ride, and snorkel, relied on a word-of-mouth system from camps further up river when it came to flooding, according to The New York Times. But in 2015, a flood in Wimberley, 75 miles east of Kerrville, killed 13 people and hundreds of homes were destroyed and damaged when the Blanco River crested to nearly 30 feet in a matter of hours. It brought the dangers of flash flooding front of mind for officials in Kerr County who debated at local meetings whether to bolster their flood emergency system with weather sirens now used by other cities. Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, proposed that Kerrville establish a similar system to one that had been put in place in Wimberley. But it was deemed to expensive by fellow commissioners. 'It sort of evaporated,' Moser, who retired in 2021, told The Times. 'It just didn't happen.' Last week, downpours and catastrophic flooding in Hill Country devastated Camp Mystic, the Christian girls' summer camp on the Guadalupe River. The river rapidly rose 20 feet in 95 minutes in the early hours of the morning. Camp Mystic confirmed Monday that 27 girls, some as young as eight, and staffers had been killed. Ten girls remain missing and one counselor, according to local officials. Moser wasn't the only one who had pushed for a better emergency warning system, according to The Wall Street Journal. Former Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer, who had responded to the 1987 floods that killed teens at a camp in Kendall County, was hoping to install outdoor warning sirens in Kerrville. The sirens in Kendall County, which is about 81 miles away from Kerr County, went off on Friday. Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, also said budget concerns waylaid any action. 'Taxpayers won't pay for it,' Kelly recently told The Times. He said he didn't know if people might reconsider in the wake of this tragedy. In 2018, Kerr County applied for a $1 million grant for a flood warning system. The application was not selected, according to KXAN. In 2020, a commissioner said the county had been 'trying to get a new flood warning system here.' As recently as a May budget meeting, commissioners were discussing a system being developed by a regional agency. Attempts to improve response on a state level were also met with resistance in the last few months. A bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve the state's disaster response did not pass at the statehouse. But, had it passed, it still would not have gone into effect until after the Hill Country flooding, The Texas Tribune noted. And it's not just smaller communities that lacked warning systems. The city of Austin, which also saw fatalities in the floods and is one of the state's largest cities and home to nearly 1 million residents, doesn't have an emergency warning system. But, a spokesperson for the city of Austin told KXAN the fastest way to get information out is with 'the technology we have today' and there was a concern that sirens could 'cause confusion.' Since the disaster, 446 people have signed a petition for an early warning siren system in Kerr County. Moser said Kerr County had previously taken some measures to mitigate potential danger, including installing flood gauges and barriers, according to The Washington Post. This weekend, Texas Governor Greg Abbott says a special session at the Capitol will focus on better warnings for floods. It's hard to know how much of a difference a flood warning system would have made last Friday, Moser said. But, he believes it could have had some benefit. As of Monday afternoon, the death toll stood at 91 people with dozens more still missing. 'I think it could have helped a lot of people,' said Moser.
USA Today
08-07-2025
- Climate
- USA Today
Texas county where campers died was denied money to boost warning systems
Nearly a decade before catastrophic flooding in south Texas killed at least 95 people, including 27 girls and counselors from a beloved summer camp, the state's Division of Emergency Management denied requests from the county where the camp is held for a $1 million grant to improve its flood warning system. Summer camps were top of mind during county leaders' discussions of the project, meeting minutes show. Then-County Commissioner Tom Moser envisioned designating point people at each camp who would monitor a website and alert camp counselors and attendees if evacuation was needed. The Division of Emergency Management did not answer USA TODAY's specific questions about why the county's applications were rejected. "As we are in the middle of ongoing response operations, our priority is life-safety of the public right now," chief communications officer Wes Rapaport said in an email. Spokespeople for Kerr County did not respond to requests for comment. Phone and email messages attempting to reach Moser and Dub Thomas, Kerr County's deputy sheriff and emergency management coordinator, went unreturned. In June 2016, President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in Texas after torrential rains killed 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in the state's southeast corner. It unlocked more than $100 million in money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to both clean up the damage and help communities across the state prepare for the next disaster. Kerr County, part of a region whose rivers' and creeks' high flooding potential earned it the nickname 'Flash Flood Alley,' was among the communities that sought preventative funding. It asked for $1 million to build a flood warning system that would have upgraded 20 water gauge systems, added new water level sensors and posts, and created software and a website to distribute that information to the public in real-time. More: Hard-hit areas in Texas face new flooding risks; death toll climbs to 104: Live updates More: A flood killed his entire family in 2015. Now, he's joined search efforts in Texas. Although some nearby jurisdictions, such as Cornal County, built siren systems to alert residents to floods, Moser noted that many people in Kerr County opposed sirens. A website, he hoped, would fill that void. 'We can do all the water level monitoring we want, but if we don't get that information to the public in a timely way, then this whole thing is not worth it,' he said at a January 2017 meeting, days before the application deadline. Under FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Assistance program, the federal government can distribute money for preventive measures to states that request it. Cities, counties and nonprofits then apply to their states for a piece of it. In Texas, the Division of Emergency Management decides which applications to approve. The Texas Division of Emergency Management denied Kerr County's 2017 application, meeting minutes show. Kerr County applied again in 2018, when more federal funding became available after Hurricane Harvey. But meeting minutes indicate that Texas' emergency authority again did not approve it. Kerr County has long used software called CodeRed to notify residents about floods, fires and other emergencies via cell phone. In 2020, county leaders voted to expand CodeRed by integrating it with a FEMA system, which would enable it to alert people passing through the area, even if they don't have the local CodeRed app. The expansion, however, was just an expansion of the old system – not the new system with upgraded gauges, new sensors and a public website that the county desperately wanted. 'We've been trying to get a new Flood Warning System here,' Thomas, the county's emergency management coordinator, said at the November 2020 meeting. 'We just haven't been able to do it.'
The Independent
07-07-2025
- Climate
- The Independent
Texas officials long feared for riverbank summer camps. A warning system was rejected as too expensive
Officials in Kerr County, Texas, had long been concerned about kids' summer camps along the banks of the Guadalupe River, an area known as 'flash flood alley.' The camps in the idyllic Texas Hill Country, where children from the surrounding big cities of San Antonio, Austin and Fredericksburg came to fish, horseback ride, and snorkel, relied on a word-of-mouth system from camps further up river when it came to flooding, according to The New York Times. But in 2015, a flood in Wimberley, 75 miles east of Kerrville, killed 13 people and hundreds of homes were destroyed and damaged when the Blanco River crested to nearly 30 feet in a matter of hours. It brought the dangers of flash flooding front of mind for officials in Kerr County who debated at local meetings whether to bolster their flood emergency system with weather sirens now used by other cities. Tom Moser, a former Kerr County commissioner, proposed that Kerrville establish a similar system to one that had been put in place in Wimberley. But it was deemed to expensive by fellow commissioners. 'It sort of evaporated,' Moser, who retired in 2021, told The Times. 'It just didn't happen.' On the Fourth of July, downpours and catastrophic flooding in hill country devastated Camp Mystic, the Christian girls' summer camp on the Guadalupe River. The river rapidly rose 20 feet in 95 minutes in the early hours of the morning. Camp Mystic confirmed Monday that 27 girls, some as young as eight, and staffers had been killed. Ten girls remain missing and one counselor, according to local officials. Moser wasn't the only one who had pushed for a better emergency warning system, according to The Wall Street Journal. Former Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer, who had responded to the 1987 floods that killed teens at a camp in Kendall County, was hoping to install outdoor warning sirens in Kerrville. The sirens in Kendall County, which is about 81 miles away from Kerr County, went off on Friday. Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge and its most senior elected official, also said budget concerns waylaid any action. 'Taxpayers won't pay for it,' Kelly recently told The Times. He said he didn't know if people might reconsider in the wake of this tragedy. In 2018, Kerr County applied for a $1 million grant for a flood warning system. The application was not selected, according to KXAN. In 2020, a commissioner said the county had been 'trying to get a new flood warning system here.' As recently as a May budget meeting, commissioners were discussing a system being developed by a regional agency. Attempts to improve response on a state level were also met with resistance in the last few months. A bill that would have established a statewide plan to improve the state's disaster response did not pass at the statehouse. But, had it passed, it still would not have gone into effect until after the Hill Country flooding, The Texas Tribune noted. And it's not just smaller communities that lacked warning systems. The city of Austin, which also saw fatalities in the floods and is one of the state's largest cities and home to nearly a 1 million residents, doesn't have an emergency warning system. But, a spokesperso n for the city of Austin told KXAN the fastest way to get information out is with 'the technology we have today' and there was a concern that sirens could 'cause confusion.' Since the disaster, 446 people have signed a petition for an early warning siren system in Kerr County. Moser said Kerr County had previously taken some measures to mitigate potential danger, including installing flood gauges and barriers, according to The Washington Post. This weekend, Texas Governor Greg Abbott says a special session at the Capitol will focus on better warnings for floods. It's hard to know how much of a difference a flood warning system would have made last Friday, Moser said. But, he believes it could have had some benefit. As of Monday afternoon, the death toll stood at 91 people with dozens more still missing. 'I think it could have helped a lot of people,' said Moser.
