Texas summer camp evacuated 70 staying near river ahead of flooding: ‘Saw it coming’

A Texas summer camp near the Guadalupe River evacuated about 70 children and adults after camp officials noticed rising waters and a deluge of rain early on the Fourth of July. 

The 500-acre Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly, a recreation destination which had been hosting a summer camp, as well as a youth conference with churches across the U.S., is located at the headwaters of the river and had been monitoring the situation for about 24 hours, Mo-Ranch communications director Lisa Winters told KENS5.

It was about 1 a.m. Friday when a facilities manager, Aroldo Barrera, notified his boss, who had been monitoring reports of the storms approaching, the Associated Press reported. 

Despite the absence of warning by local authorities, camp officials at Mo-Ranch acted quickly on their own, relocating about 70 children and adults staying overnight in a building near the river. With the kids safe, camp leaders including President and CEO Tim Huchton avoided the catastrophe that hit at least one other camp near Hunt, Texas.

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“They helped them pack up,” Winters told the AP on Sunday. “They got them up, they got them out, put them up on higher ground.”

Other places fared much worse. Flash floods roared through Texas Hill Country before dawn on Friday, decimating landscape near the river and leaving more than 80 dead and dozens unaccounted for. As of Sunday, officials said 10 girls from nearby Camp Mystic remained missing. Rescue and recovery teams combed the area for them and others still unaccounted for days afterward. 

“We have the great blessing and advantage of being elevated enough to get people to a higher ground,” Winters told KENS5 on Saturday. “We were making our plans and changing our plans and moving people up to higher ground well in advance last night.” 

She said Mo-Ranch had been hosting several hundred campers, several hundred people from the conference, as well as regular guests there for the holiday weekend, all of whom were accounted for. She explained that the camp was without power.

“Mo-Ranch is a Christian-based camp, and we prepare kids to be strong and to be resilient, and to have faith that they can get forward,” Winters told KENS. “The ironic part of this, the big youth celebration that I attended last night – we just changed plans because we knew something was coming – the whole theme was stress and anxiety for kids and how to fight it and how to be powerful. They just put this into place, and they pulled together.” 

“I can’t say there wasn’t anxiety. I wasn’t right there when it happened. But everybody was prepared. Everybody was strong. Everybody safely made it through,” Winters said. 

The decision to leave added to the mounting accounts of how camps and residents in the area say they were left to make their own decisions in the absence of warnings or notifications from the county.

Local authorities have faced heavy scrutiny and at times have deflected questions about how much warning they had or were able to provide the public, saying the reviews will come later, according to the AP. For now, they say they are focusing on rescues. Officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of months’ worth of rain for the area.

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Winters told the AP that Mo-Ranch received no direct information from county officials about flooding that could – and did – take lives. 

“We had no warning this was coming,” Winters said, adding that it would have been “devastating” had camp officials not been looking at weather reports and the rising river waters. 

Mo-Ranch “saw it coming well in advance, and they did something about it,” she said.

Winters told KENS that there are hundreds of camps located along the Guadalupe River, and Mo-Ranch sits on the top of the cliffs in Hunt. 

By about 7 a.m. on Friday, camp staff began contacting children’s parents, telling them their kids were safe. 

“They knew that those parents would wake up and just see all this media footage of kids lost, or the river,” Winters told the AP. “They’re like, ‘Tell your parents you’re OK’ … We made sure every single guest, every single kid, was accounted for.”

The camp, which sits on higher ground than some in the area, suffered some damage, but not as significant as others, Winters said. 

“The buildings don’t matter,” she said. “I can’t imagine losing children, or people.” 

She said a sturdy aluminum kayak was wrapped around a tree “like a pretzel.” 

“That just shows you the sheer power of the water. I don’t know how any people could survive. We’re blessed,” she said.

The camp remained closed on Sunday and Mo-Ranch was working on ways to help other camps affected by the flood.

“We’re in a difficult place because others are really suffering,” Winters, who became emotional during an interview, told the AP. “We’re a sisterhood of camps. We take care of each other.”