Camp Mystic and the Guadalupe River

July 1, 2026. As the one-year anniversary of the horrific floods in Kerrville, Texas approaches, news media and news influencers are beginning to generate slop stating, No one could have known. This could not have been predicted. There will never be a flood like this one. Heaviest rains in the history of Texas.

If you’re interested in fact-based reporting about the history of flooding along the Guadalupe and other central Texas rivers, especially about Texas’ lack of interest in doing anything about flood prevention or construction restrictions, you may want to read my three-part series from 2025.

Part 1—Boerne, Texas: A river runs through it. Six inches of rain, poured into a dry creekbed next to Uncle Martin’s shop in Boerne, was all it took to destroy a lifetime of hard work. Includes definition of a “100-year flood”—and no, Sean Flynn of The Atlantic, it wasn’t a “10,000 year flood.” Your barely-researched article presaged what’s coming in the way of excuses and undeserved sympathy.

Post also includes: Texas’ refusal to accept “guvmint” money to take care of flooding issues. And, a short list of the fourteen worst floods to hit the Texas hill country between 1899 and 2025.

Part 2—“There is no way we could have seen this coming." Houston Post, 9/14/1921: “Will the indifference of the past 76 years continue indefinitely, in spite of the painful lessons that are forced upon us year after year?”

Details about the following floods: September 1921: Rio Grande, San Antonio, Colorado, Guadalupe, San Pedro, Brazos, Little, and Pedernales Rivers, and Alazan Creek (Austin, San Antonio, and Central Texas); May 1930: Guadalupe River (Kerrville, Boerne); October 1930: Guadalupe River (Kerrville); and, July 1932: Guadalupe River, as well as Nueces, Sabine, Frio, Blanco, and Leona Rivers (Kerrville and surrounding areas, Comfort, Uvalde, Ingram).

Part 3—“There is really, absolutely positively, no way we could have seen this coming.” Houston Post, 09/22/1936: “For years we have stood by idly while this tremendous waste of human life, property and resources went on unchecked and the State was impoverished.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

September 1932: Guadalupe River (Kerrville); October 27, 1932: Camp Mystic rebuilt in the floodplain; September 1936: Guadalupe, Concho, Llano, Leon, and Nueces Rivers, and Pecan Bayou (Kerrville, Uvalde, Llano, Fredericksburg, Gonzales); September 1952: Guadalupe, Pedernales, Blanco, San Marcos, and Comal Rivers and Cibolo, Town, Cherokee, and Barons Creeks (Kerrville, Fredericksburg, Comfort, San Saba, Johnson City, Marble Falls, Boerne, New Braunfels, Beeville, Luling); September 1964: Rio Grande, and Cibolo Creek (Laredo, San Antonio, Boerne); May 1972: Guadalupe, Comal, and Navidad Rivers and Blueders Creek (New Braunfels, San Antonio, Edna, Gonzales); and, July 1987: Guadalupe River and Cypress Creek (Kerrville, Hunt, Comfort).

And each time, local officials and legislators in Austin said, and newspapers reported:

No one could have known. This could not have been predicted. There will never be a flood like this one. Heaviest rains in the history of Texas.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the families of Camp Mystic and others who lost their lives. They sent their children off to camps with the expectation that their kids would come home sunburned, and with a million stories. Summer camp is not supposed to end with funerals for almost thirty girls.

I have even greater sympathy for the remaining 100+ who unnecessarily died in the floods. The impact on Kerr County, above all, was grievous.

But I hope those families win substantial wrongful death lawsuits against the people whose negligence and irresponsibility seems to have—once again—caused unnecessary death and destruction.

For the officials in Kerrville and with FEMA who signed off on construction permits in the damn floodplain…

For the camp owners who repeatedly made foolish decisions to build in that floodplain…

For the camp directors who did not take every precaution and have warning systems in place and working…

For the citizens of Kerrville who continually voted down bond issues that would improve flood control in your city… [In the year since, Kerr County has installed only eight sirens for flood warning, and no flood prevention projects appear to be in the works.]

For officials in Austin who waited forever to ask for help from FEMA—it wasn’t even officials in Austin or the majority of the Texas contingent in Congress who did so, rather twelve Democrats in the House of Representatives AND NO REPUBLICANS asked for aid from FEMA. On July 23, 2025. Almost three weeks after the flood. Because no one in Austin did their duty… [Trump signed off on FEMA aid for Kerrville in September 2025, more than two months after the flood.]

For politicians in Congress who are dismantling FEMA, NOAA, and other agencies that provide timely warning and forecasts…

For everyone who didn’t care, who doesn’t care, I hope a good class action lawsuit bankrupts you.

The people who died because of you did not deserve that death.

Full Houston Post editorial, September 22, 1936 (page 6)

The Colorado River, rising to record-breaking flood stages all along its course and threatening life and property, is centering attention in Texas again upon the need for an effective program of flood control in this State.

The Colorado, the Brazos, the San Jacinto, the Trinity, the Guadalupe and many lesser streams annually exact heavy toll of human life and property. They pour their muddy waters over some of the most fertile farming land in the Southwest, driving human beings from their homes, ruining crops, washing out highways and railroads and leaving hundreds homeless and destitute.

The damage by the erosion of the soil, a direct result of the floods, is enormous. Every year millions of dollars in fertile soil is washed into the Gulf of Mexico and Texas is permanently deprived of an irreplaceable resource.

The Colorado river flood is only in its earliest stages, but the damage is estimated already at $5,000,000 [$120,547,841 in 2026], a sum sufficient to make a thorough survey of the flood prevention needs of the entire State.

Here is a problem that challenges the best efforts of every public official in Texas and every patriotic private citizen. For years we have stood by idly while this tremendous waste of human life, property, and resources went on unchecked and the State was impoverished.

Houston understands better than any city in Texas, perhaps, what the menace of flood waters means. Houstonians have watched three destructive floods roll over busy business areas and the residential sections in a few years.

This city not only should work for adequate flood control structures to protect the community, but for a co-ordinated flood control plan for all of Texas.

I wonder what those editors would think if they knew that Houstonians had built directly in a known flood plan in Bear Creek (see Hurricane Harvey, 2017). Much less what they would think of the 2025 debacle in Kerrville.

No one listened then. No one will listen now. Texans will keep dying in floods and will keep saying there was no way they could have predicted it.

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