re: Reports of over 20 young camp girls missing In TX floods

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That is horrific.

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Yeah, hoping the guy can find peace and a reason to keep living life. Likely losing both parents, his wife, and his daughter in one fell swoop.... The mental anguish and survivors' guilt from that will be hell. I know us men are resilient creatures, but damn, a man can only take so much.

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a NOAA weather radio

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This is great advice. I keep a little one in the pod of my kayak. Anyone fishing in the marsh in the summertime knows how quick weather can turn, and you don’t always have quality cell service.

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I do wonder if the camps will look into moving the sleeping cabins to higher ground moving forward.

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I doubt Mystic reopens at all, especially in that location. Will guess that other camps will try to move off the river for the cabins and keep that area for activities.

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I mean it’s a perfect storm of that it happened during the middle of the night.

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Middle of the night on the busiest weekend of the year for the river.

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We probably won’t ever know if the young campers from Mystic had any idea what was even going on.

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I'm trying not to think about it...

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This need to be addressed by the state to insure it never happens again..

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I think you'll see this implemented no matter what the installation cost and maintenance will be. Alot of those areas do not have power and do not have cell service.

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At home I just use a basic Midland weather radio and it works great.

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That's what we use, as well. Hadn't considered them for traveling and camping, but it's not a bad idea.

Twice in my life I have awoken on river kayak trips with water creeping up.

In the pitch black of night it can be pretty scary. We always have our exit route planned before we camp.

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True.. but many the rivers and tributaries have permanent gauges in place .. I can monitor remotely on my phone..

If all the upstream gauges on tributaries read flood stage at the same that are feeding into a single river you know you have a massive flood coming.. hopefully in today’s world of technological they can but permanent sensors in place with automated downstream alarms ..

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Not disagreeing at all here...just thinking through the process. A flood emergency was issued and alerts sent to phones & NOAA radios. Do the alarms wake more people up? How many alarms are needed?

What triggers them going off? Every flash flood warning for the county? Since there have been floods here in the past - most, if not all, of these structures are outside of a 1% flood risk and a flash flood warning would likely only pose a risk for those driving.

I know some counties throughout tornado zones have issues with sirens going off and folks not heeding them because of the frequency. It's a fine line.

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What lessons can we take away from this tragedy to make sure it doesn't happen again?

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Probably too early to know.

I know a lot of people saying they should install river gauges. I don’t think people realize just how remote some areas of the hill country are.

Severe weather procedures should be a part of any organization especially one with kids. I’m sure Mystic had one and this happened so fast I’m not sure it would’ve mattered.

I just don’t think people realize how fast this happened. We’re talking about water rise of 10’ in mins and almost 30’ in an hour. That’s biblical. You can’t plan for that.

I’m not making this political, I promise. But thus far Texas has handled response for this very well and it’s one of the reasons I agreed with the decision to put states back in charge of emergency response. No one knows this area better than state and local officials, and FEMA had a habit of showing up and trying to dictate response oftentimes to the detriment of recovery. Fed should support the states, not the other way around. I hope many states are paying attention on what they can take away.

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To me, a critical factor are the large amount of warnings we receive for weather. I think that causes fatigue and when the one comes that you must act on, youre not as fast to act.

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I’ve seen a bunch of meteorologists stating this as well.

LINK

With all the heartbreaking news, I think this thread needs a tad bit of good news. The Coast Guard AST saved a 165 people in the flood on his FIRST rescue mission. I cant imagine how exhasted he must have been. I hope he and all the other rescuers never pay for a drink again.

Mystic will need insurance to operate. Will they be able to afford that? I’m imagine they filed a claim for loss of income due to COVID when they were shut down.