See how FEMA maps reveal camps’ flood risks

More than a dozen summer camps dot the banks of the Guadalupe River and its tributaries, a vast network of waterways twisting through the hills of Kerr County, Texas.

But many of the camps’ idyllic locales also face the danger of severe flooding, since much of the land near the river is designated as a high-risk area by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the most affected area, on the upper Guadalupe River in Kerr County, at least 13 of them lie next to or are partially inside high-risk flood zones, according to a Washington Post analysis of FEMA maps.

“Any time you’re near a river, there’s risk” said Allison C. Reilly, an associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland at College Park.

See how FEMA maps reveal camps’ flood risks

The rural area northwest of San Antonio is part of a swath of Central Texas known as Flash Flood Alley because it is one of the deadliest places in the country for rapid floods.

Over the holiday weekend, that risk became reality when torrential downpours dumped rain on the area, sending river water surging into camp grounds in the middle of the night. As of Monday, at least 94 people, including 28 children, have been confirmed dead following the flash floods.

“We do get watches a lot in this area, and we have floods,” said Richard Eastland Jr., whose father Richard “Dick” Eastland ran Camp Mystic, a beloved Christian summer camp for girls that was devastated by floodwaters.

“But this, I don’t know how else to explain it; it was tremendous, and it was fast,” Eastland Jr. said Saturday. “We’ve never had water this high, ever.”

Camp Mystic and its neighboring camps are in Texas Hill Country, where rivers wind between rolling hills and snake through rugged valleys. But the region’s picturesque topography contributes to its increased risk of flooding, said Hatim Sharif, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

A line of cliffs and steep hills, known as the Balcones Escarpment, is one reason Hill Country experiences intense rain, Sharif said. Warm air from the Gulf of Mexico hurtles up these cliffs and hills and condenses, leading to heavy rains. Rainwater can then rapidly course down hills from many different directions, inundating streams and rivers and causing water levels to surge.

“Water will move very fast,” Sharif said.

As climate change drives temperatures higher, the warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, increasing the chances of downpours that could lead to flooding. This dynamic could put several summer camps along the Guadalupe River in harm’s way.

Camp Mystic, which has been attended by the daughters of Lyndon B. Johnson and several Texas governors, as well as former first lady Laura Bush, was among the hardest hit by the overnight floodwaters. The camp said Monday that 27 campers and staff, including Eastland Sr., the camp’s director, were killed.

Just up the river, floodwaters also breached cabins at Camp La Junta, a boys camp that has been running for more than 90 years. As of Friday night, everyone from the camp had been safely evacuated, according to an announcement posted on the camp’s Facebook page.

Downstream at Camp Heart O’ the Hills, staff reported that the area was hit by “catastrophic flooding” overnight. While the all-girls camp wasn’t in session at the time, Jane Ragsdale, the 68-year-old director and co-owner of the camp, was killed.

Landowners are allowed to build inside high-risk flood areas, but there are requirements that buildings and structures must meet, said Joel Scata, a senior attorney in the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate adaptation division. While FEMA’s building requirements haven’t been updated since 1976, local municipalities can enact more stringent rules, he said. Kerr County instituted flood damage prevention orders in 2020. The regulations include a number of provisions, such as rules requiring newly constructed residential and nonresidential buildings, or those undergoing significant renovations, to be elevated.

But the structures in high-risk flood zones tend to be lower-value buildings, such as cabins or mobile home parks, Reilly said.

“When we often think about building in floodplains, a lot of times we say, ‘Okay, we’ll put low-value buildings in floodplains,’” she said. “So we think of cabins. They’re a great thing because they’re these low-value structures. But that’s really putting a lot of emphasis on how much it costs to rebuild, the damage, and not that there’ll be kids in these cabins and just the risk to the people.”

It’s critical, she added, for communities in flood-prone areas to reduce risk using a variety of strategies, including raising structures, installing early-warning systems and ensuring that people are prepared with evacuation plans.

Youth camps in Texas are required to have emergency plans that include disaster preparedness. Inspectors with the Texas Department of State Health Services check camps’ emergency plans during annual inspections, and the plans are required to be posted in all buildings. Licensed camps also must provide instructions to campers on what to do in the event of a fire, disaster or evacuation.

Still, many in the flood-prone region appeared to be caught off guard by the severity of the recent disaster.

Even if structures are outside risk areas, that doesn’t mean they are safe. FEMA’s maps are limited in what they present, and the agency has stressed that they aren’t meant to be predictive — they are based off historical data.

“It assumes that flooding of the past is going to be like the flooding of the future, but that’s not accurate,” Scata said. He called for more data that accounts for future flood risk and increased accessibility to the information.

“Flooding is only becoming more severe because of things like greater rainstorm events that really skew the maps to be underestimating risk,” he said.

Arelis R. Hernández in Kerr County, Texas, contributed to this report.