# Massive flooding in Texas; 20 children missing from a summer camp **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 4, 2025, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512 "2025-07-04T21:50:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/241 "2025-07-12T19:47:22Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > A stay cost $4,375 in 2011. All the coverage before now has characterized it as a Christian camp, but from the article it seems to be a snooty Rich Person Socialite camp. That’s $145 a day which includes feeding and activities. I wouldn’t call that snooty rich person money. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/242 "2025-07-12T19:48:53Z")
I would. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/243 "2025-07-12T19:53:47Z")
Camp doing well, need to expand, but those pesky regulations and FEMA flood maps…what to do? I know, let’s grease a few palms over at the county and with FEMA… > **[FEMA removed dozens of Camp Mystic buildings from 100-year flood map before...](https://apnews.com/article/texas-flood-camp-mystic-map-records-investigation-e12bee8d5f88301363861ca12c19b929)** > > Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors. _In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county’s flood map to remove 15 of the camp’s buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week’s flood._ _After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation._ ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/244 "2025-07-12T19:56:06Z")
Clearly you’ve never been to Disney World. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/245 "2025-07-12T19:59:34Z")
Yes, you may rest assured that that is very much true. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/246 "2025-07-12T20:21:32Z")
You don’t stay at \*Disney 30 days. Or go for multiple years. You and your sister. Nope, too rich for my blood. (\*I fully expect someone to provide a cite saying someone did just that thing) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2025, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/247 "2025-07-12T20:33:25Z")
Yes, when originally reading about the summer camp, I was thinking something more like _Meatballs_, not the Catskills from _The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel_. If you can comfortably and responsibly afford to spend several thousand a year to send your kid to summer camp, you might not be snooty, but you are rich. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/248 "2025-07-13T00:00:02Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > You don’t stay at \*Disney 30 days. Or go for multiple years. You and your sister. No but it’s at least 3 times as expensive going to Disney and people usually stay for 4 to 7 days as a family. So now it’s you, your sister, and mom and dad. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/249 "2025-07-13T00:58:00Z")
Thats just 5-7 days. What’s Mom and Dad gonna do with children the rest of the summer? 🤔 This is what Parents do. They spend all summer carting kids to recreation. Easy, peasey find a sleepaway camp with all the fun stuff. It costs what?? Ok. We can pull that off. Or we can take the kids camping and spend weekends entertaining them. Maybe a daytrip or two. Yeah, its a choice. Wealthier folks do wealthy people stuff. Like they will. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/250 "2025-07-13T14:56:07Z")
Some people absolutely spend a month at Disney World. When I go for a week in December, I stay at Fort Wilderness, which is their camp ground. I stay in a cabin, but there is an area for people with RVs or tents. There are people in the RV section that are there for a good month or more, and they go all-out decorating their site for the holidays. Some reserve and get the same site every year. I’ve met some of them and discussed it with them. Not everyone does it, but not everyone goes to expensive camps in Texas either. People with enough money will do what they want with it. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/251 "2025-07-13T15:24:04Z")
I had to do this as best I recall from approximately 45 year old memories, but as a young to mid-teenager I used to go to summer camp for two weeks every summer. We weren’t wealthy, just a middle-middle-class family. I ran the base cost of those sessions through an inflation calculator to find the equivalent cost in today’s dollars, which came out to about $1,200-2,100 (I attended different types of sessions which varied somewhat in cost) which is very much comparable to 2 weeks at Camp Mystic for the higher end (such as the wilderness backpacking trip year) and half the cost for just “basic camping” (which had fewer special activities.) Although I don’t know if they have/allow two week sessions at Mystic. Having one and two week sessions does help the middle-class with costs, along with different levels of extra activities. On the other hand, I wasn’t costing the family for traveling sports teams or a lot of other activities common to middle-class kids these days. And we didn’t go to Disney World, not ever. Or eat out much. Or take whole-family vacations (except that one time when someone _gave_ us time in a cabin near Traverse Bay, Michigan) That two weeks was pretty much it for additional costs beyond the basics for me. So… yes, a camp like Mystic probably _is_ within reach of someone middle class _if they really want it_. Maybe they’re climbing the social ladder and think it would help their kids do so as well. For an older teen maybe she can earn some of the money for camp. But it would have to be a _priority_ for the family and kid in question. Camping was a big deal to me so I chose that over a lot of other things I could have been doing. When I was older I’d kick in some of my own money, in addition to buying whatever gear I needed for that particular summer. One possible difference between the camp I went to as a teen and possibly Mystic is that the camp I went to had some financial aid available and actively sought to bring in a range of campers of all sorts. Don’t know how Mystic is about that sort of thing, but it does seem dominated by White and Wealthy. They probably have had some middle-middle and upper-middle class kids attend, but they’d be the “poor” kids at camp. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/252 "2025-07-13T18:51:07Z")
> **[Search for Texas flood victims paused as heavy rains bring new threat of high...](https://apnews.com/article/texas-flooding-guadalupe-river-search-4c561ad81ee11c8a1fd586cac460c2fc)** > > Emergency crews have suspended their search for victims of catastrophic flooding in central Texas amid new warnings that additional rain will again cause waterways to surge. There has been a very rapid decline in the number of new bodies found each day even though they now have a huge number of searchers. According to some numbers: July 5 51 Bodies Found July 6 29 Bodies Found July 7 24 Bodies Found July 8 7 Bodies Found July 9 9 Bodies Found July 10 1 Bodies Found July 11 8 Bodies Found July 12 0 Bodies Found July 13 0 Bodies Found to the current number of 129 bodies found. So the 160 plus missing must be buried under huge piles of debris–or perhaps incorrectly reported as missing. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/253 "2025-07-13T19:16:31Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > perhaps incorrectly reported as missing I originally had the same thought, but now I’m thinking that anybody who was in this group would certainly have been accounted for, as it’s been over a week since the flooding. Hate to say it, but the smell is probably going to lead searchers to many of the remaining bodies. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/254 "2025-07-13T19:20:34Z")
I’ve found myself wondering if people (bodies) could have washed out all the way to the San Antonio Bay with _so much_ water. Just heartbreaking. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/255 "2025-07-13T20:23:45Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > to the current number of 129 bodies found. So the 160 plus missing must be buried under huge piles of debris–or perhaps incorrectly reported as missing. > [@Railer13](#): > > Hate to say it, but the smell is probably going to lead searchers to many of the remaining bodies. Hate to say it, but not all bodies may be intact. There was so much force involved with that flood, and large objects crashing together in the water… some people may have wound up in pieces in debris piles that would make identifying a body difficult at best. Add in some natural scavengers getting to any easily accessible pieces in said debris piles and some people may be both legitimately missing and never found. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/256 "2025-07-13T20:41:44Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Easy, peasey find a sleepaway camp with all the fun stuff. First time I ever heard of a “sleepaway camp” was around five years ago, when somebody somewhere mentioned the movies. Not a whole lot of fun stuff there… ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/257 "2025-07-13T22:32:06Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > So the 160 plus missing must be buried under huge piles of debris–or perhaps incorrectly reported as missing. When the [St. Francis Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam) collapsed in 1928, it washed away an unknown number of people. I recall hearing bodies would turn up years or decades later downstream as more land was opened up to farming/plowing. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/258 "2025-07-13T22:36:24Z")
I’m thinking parts of people are miles and miles away. It makes sense to start the search nearby the source of the bodies, but that’s not where the long tail of remains will end up. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/259 "2025-07-13T22:42:29Z")
Many of them are also going to end up being found in places nobody ever thought to look. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512/260 "2025-07-13T22:45:08Z")
Yeah, people never think to look to inside wildlife or feral pets. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/massive-flooding-in-texas-20-children-missing-from-a-summer-camp/1020512.md?page=14)