“If I wasn’t going to die for natural causes, that was the only other way: to save the girls who loved and cared so much.”
Not only did the field owner die trying to save the campers but also spent decades of his life warning The dangers of the flood along the Guadalupe RiverRecently defending the new flood warning systems.
Camp Mystic is a summer camp located in Hunt, Texas this Lost 27 people to mortals floods on July 4. The camp owner, Dick Eastland, received a hero for his attempt to Save Young Camper’s life during the tragedy.
After ten children in a nearby camp were fatally moving away from a flood in 1987, Eastland defended a new flood warning system. More recently, it served the River Authority Local Council, supporting any effort to improve flood warnings on the Guadalupe River, CNN reported.
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“The river is beautiful,” Eastland told Austin American-Statesman in 1990. “But it must be respected.”
Now, the catastrophe serves as a reminder of serious damage and floods in tragedy, causing ideas for the ways in which officials could be better prepared in the future.
“If he would not die for natural causes, this was the only other way: saving the girls he loved and cared for so much,” wrote Eastland’s grandson, George Eastland, on Instagram.
“Although he no longer walks on this land, his impact will never fade into the lives he touched.”
History of Flows Functions in the Mystic field
The flood warning system that Eastland installed in the late 1980’s was broken, leaving the river authority to close -in 1999, saying that it was “unreliable with some of the system stations that did not report information”, according to Kerrivlle Daily Times.
CNN reported that there were more attempts to implement new flood monitoring systems, even some with alert sirens that could send alerts, but these attempts did not gain enough support, thanks to the local opposition, the lack of state support and the low budgets.
Multiple Camp Mystic booths were located in areas that the federal government considered a high risk to the floods of the Guadalupe River, detailed by CNN.
The camp built new cabins in less risky areas, but nothing was done to move these cabins still in high risk areas.
“Camp officials could not have been aware of flood risk when they first built cabins,” said Anna Serra-Llobet, a researcher at the University of California-Bereley, studying flood risk.
He added that the camp could have built cabins before it even created flood maps.
However, Serra-Llobet said that officials should have been aware that some cabins were in a “serious danger” in areas.
The Field Mystic Disaster Plan approved days before the fatal flood
Only two days before a devastating flood claimed the lives of more than two dozen people at the Christians camp of all girls, Texas inspectors had approved the emergency plans of the camp, according to Associated Press.
On Tuesday, the State Health Services Department published records that indicated that the camp had complied with numerous state regulations on “procedures that must be implemented in case of disaster”.
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These included the evacuation procedures of the teaching campers and assign specific responsibilities to each member and director of the staff.
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