by Records reveal that regulators granted a number of appeals that removed several of the Camp Mystic’s buildings from designated federal flood zones in the years before to storms killing over two dozen people at the Texas camp.
A large portion of the camp was located within a 100-year flood zone, which is an area deemed to be at high danger of flooding, according to flood maps created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2011. By presenting elevation estimates of a number of buildings that permitted them to be exempt from the federal limits, Camp Mystic was able to successfully contest those designations, which would restrict renovation projects and need flood insurance.
The exclusions given to Camp Mystic, a girls’ camp on the Guadalupe River close to Hunt, were confusing, according to Sarah Pralle, an associate professor at Syracuse University who has studied federal flood mapping. According to her, some of the buildings were still quite near the anticipated water elevations.
The fact that it’s a children’s camp worries me a lot, Ms. Pralle stated. You would think that you would want to be extra careful and go above and above the bare minimum needed to defend against flooding.
The specific buildings that were taken out of the flood maps were not made explicit by the federal records, and the camp’s more thorough removal application—which was initially published by The Associated Press—was not accessible. Some of the camp’s cabins were located within a floodway, a particularly perilous area where deadly floodwaters would be predicted to flow, according to FEMA’s official flood maps. The larger area where other cabins were located was likewise predicted to flood once every 100 years. The written petitions from Camp Mystic have not been incorporated into those maps.
A few of the structures that were part of Camp Mystic’s applications were noted to have elevations that were more than 10 feet over the 100-year flood level, which is a gauge of the likelihood of a significant flood. Others, however, were much closer: Six of the 15 buildings listed in a 2013 paper concerning removing buildings from the flood zone were said to be within three feet of the 100-year elevation.
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