Officials at Camp Mystic on Thursday halted plans to reopen this summer, backing down after months of intensifying outrage by Texas lawmakers and the families of 27 young campers killed last year when floodwaters swept through the all-girls Christian camp in the middle of the night. The decision, a striking reversal of the camp owners' determination to reopen amid bitter opposition, follows weeks of testimony in court hearings and legislative investigations, the AP reports. Those hearings laid bare the camp's lack of detailed planning for a flood emergency, reliance on poorly trained staff, and missed chances for an evacuation that came too late as floodwaters ripped through the camp.
The floods that devastated the Texas Hill Country camp claimed the lives of 25 campers and two teenage counselors. The camp's owner, Dick Eastland, also died in the flooding. "No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July's tragedy," Camp Mystic said in a statement. A spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed Thursday that the camp withdrew its application.
The decision was praised by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who had opposed the camp's reopening while investigations were ongoing. Edward Eastland, one of the camp directors and a member of the Eastland family that owns and has operated the 100-year-old camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River, offered a tearful public apology to the victims' families on Tuesday. "We tried our hardest that night. It wasn't enough to save your daughters," Eastland said, with the victims' families sitting behind him. "I'm so sorry."
- During hearings this week, state lawmakers vowed to block the reopening, the Austin American-Statesman reports. "The Legislature will support whatever it takes to shut them down as soon as possible," said state Sen. Charles Perry.
- The parents who testified included Cici Steward, whose 8-year-old daughter Cile is the only child whose body was never found. "Camp Mystic was licensed by this state and entrusted by this state as a for-profit business whose business was taking care of and protecting our children," Steward said, per the Statesman. "The Eastlands admitted under oath that they abandoned my daughter. They abandoned all of our daughters. They left Cile with an impossible and unforgivable choice—drown in her cabin or fight violent flood waters in the dark in a blind, desperate effort to save herself."
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
