“My daughter was stolen from me": Grieving parents point to Texas camp failures at Capitol hearing

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Texas lawmakers — determined to correct the series of mishaps that resulted in the July 4 flooding deaths of 27 Camp Mystic campers and counselors — promised a hearing room of grieving parents on Wednesday that moving forward, campers will be evacuated immediately once a flood warning is issued and evacuation plans will be overhauled to prevent future tragedies.

“You have a flash flood warning or a flood warning, you will be required to remove these kids from those cabins,” said state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding, signaling that the way camps operate and the way the Texas Department of State Health Services licenses camps will drastically change.

Senate Bill 1, renamed Heaven 27 Camp Safety Act in honor of the Mystic victims, is the first comprehensive youth safety bill designed to beef up disaster procedures following the holiday weekend flash flooding that killed at least 137 people including 27 at Camp Mystic.

“Had the requirements of SB 1 been in place on the night of July 4, I have no doubt that some lives, if not all lives, would have been saved,” Perry said.

The Senate committee unanimously advanced the bill to the Senate floor Wednesday, after 16 family members of girls who died at Mystic sent the entire hearing room — including lawmakers — into tears. They recalled in tragic detail of burying their young children, most of whom were first and second graders. They told senators how the girls and their counselors followed Mystic’s emergency plan, which required kids in cabins closest to the river to remain in place during a flood.

“Joy and growth cannot exist without safety,” a crying Cici Williams Steward told committee members. Her 8-year-old daughter Cile Steward is the only child whose body has not been recovered.

“Cile's chance to experience camp only existed because I was assured that her safety and the safety of all the young girls was paramount,” Steward said. “I ask you, what could have been more important than that? But that assurance was betrayed because obvious common sense safety measures were absent, protocols that should have been in place were ignored, as a result, my daughter was stolen from me, not because of an unavoidable act of nature, but because of preventable failures on just her fifth day of camp.”

Her gut-wrenching testimony touched on telling her younger daughter, before she starts her kindergarten year, how Cile’s body has not yet been found but that she is dead. Steward had to arm the young child with such details before she hears them from classmates.

“We wait, trapped in agony, until she is brought home,” Steward said. “She needed to hear the unbearable truth from us that Cile’s body has not been found.”

Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management told the committee that the search for Cile is still ongoing.

Much of Wednesday’s testimony focused on youth camps emergency plans which are verified but not evaluated for effectiveness by the Texas Department of State Health Services. Current law does not require the state to keep copies of a youth camp’s emergency plan and it does not require that those plans be forwarded to parents ahead of time.

DSHS reviews 86 items as part of their inspections of youth camps, everything from supervisor to camper ratios and background checks on staff, to whether camps have emergency plans, ones that include evacuation procedures, that are posted in occupied buildings.

But according to John and Andrea Ferruzzo, parents of Katherine Ferruzzo, one of two Camp Mystic camp counselors who died in the flooding, their daughter followed what they termed a flawed emergency plan at Camp Mystic.

The camp passed its last inspection two days before floodwaters poured into three riverside cabins: Bubble Inn and Twins I & II which are located in what the camp called The Flats. The Ferruzzos did not testify at the hearing but in an editorial published Thursday in the Austin American-Statesman, they wrote about Camp Mystic’s staff training manual. It was among their daughter’s belongings that were returned to them.

The manual reads for those campers in higher cabins away from the water: "In case of flood, all campers on Senior Hill must stay in their cabins. They will be given instructions through the loud speaker. If the electricity is off, a walkie-talkie will be used and that all campers must never wander away from their cabin.”

But for the Mystic staff caring for younger staffers in The Flats — the cabins closest to the river — the instructions were much different. “Those on The Flats must also stay in their cabins unless told otherwise by the office. All cabins are constructed on high, safe locations."

Senate Bill 1, if it passes both chambers, would overhaul basic youth camp requirements. Installation of emergency rooftop access ladders in cabins located in floodplains would be required. Evacuation routes would be displayed in all camp cabins and youth camp emergency plans would come with more specific evacuation plans for natural disasters including flash floods. Those plans would have to be forwarded to the local emergency coordinator and be placed in the hands of parents beforehand.

During the hearing Wednesday, lawmakers zeroed in on how current law does not require the state health agency to keep copies of the plans nor are they required to be forwarded to any first responders. Lawmakers asserted that first responders could better evaluate camp emergency plans and offer better coordination on what to do when disasters, whether they are flooding or wildfires, occur.

Camps would also have to create new procedures for locating campers during emergencies, establish procedures to notify local emergency service providers, staff, parents and legal guardians of campers during an emergency. Weather alert radios would be located in each cabin.

Perry also said during the hearing that he wants DSHS to also look for outdated youth camp licensing rules and get rid of them. He said it was brought to his attention that a camp he did not name publicly in the hearing had added another 100 beds without notifying the licensing agency.

After the hearing, Perry told the Tribune that camp was Mystic. DSHS inspectors only learned of the dramatic addition through the last licensing inspection two days before the flood. An increase of that size could have major safety implications. Perry said that that lack of required notice to a change in size of a camp, has already been fixed. “We fixed it,” he said.

But the most drastic piece of this legislation is that it would bar camps from locating cabins in floodplains and force all to evacuate children once a flash flood warning or flood warning is issued in the vicinity. Parents and legal guardians would also be notified if their child’s cabin is in a floodplain.

During the committee’s July 31 hearing in Kerrville, Kerr County’s emergency manager told lawmakers that he only had emergency plans for six of what he said were 19 Kerr County youth camps. DSHS officials say their records show 17 licensed youth camps in Kerr County and 13 of those have cabins located in floodplains.

SB 1 would require the state health agency to create and maintain a database of all camp emergency plans that is accessible by the Texas Division of Emergency Management and by parents. The plans would not be made public, but parents would have access to the plans of their child’s camp.

According to the Legislative Budget Board’s estimate of SB 1’s costs, DSHS would use existing technology to house and share emergency plans but would need additional funding for configuration, testing, deployment, storage, and software licensing, costing taxpayers $264,963 in fiscal year 2026 and $11,916 each fiscal year after. The board’s fiscal analysis assumes that DSHS would need additional staff to update license holders of the new rules and to review and approve those more specific emergency plans but the cost for that is currently unknown.

All of the provisions would go into effect, if passed, before next year’s summer camp season begins.

On Wednesday, Carrie and Doug Hanna told lawmakers how they struggle with the unbearable loss of their 8-year-old daughter Hadley. Their older daughter Harper survived the flooding and they thought Hadley would, too, because the girls were together at one point.

“When you send your kids to camp, you don’t expect the next time to see them it will be identifying their body with the Texas Rangers,” Doug Hanna said.

Carrie Hanna said the only way authorities were able to confirm Hadley’s body was through the girl’s green and yellow nail polish.

Her “laying in a makeshift morgue cannot have looked more different than our beautiful girl is a sight I can't get out of my head. It haunts me day and night and is all I think of.”

State leadership has made camp safety their highest priority this special legislative session, as indicated by the legislation’s lowest bill number, after The Texas Tribune noted that Gov. Greg Abbott neglected to name camp safety a specific agenda item during the first special session.

“I can’t unhear their stories and that’s a good thing,” said state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, whose face was puffy from crying during the unrelenting testimony from parents. “We will never unhear the stories and we will make changes.”

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