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Parents who lost daughters at Camp Mystic: Their deaths were ‘100% preventable’
From The Center Square
Parents who lost their daughters from flood waters at Camp Mystic said their deaths were “100% preventable” and asked the legislature to implement mandatory safety protocols for camps statewide.
Camp Mystic, an elite Hill Country multi-million-dollar enterprise, repeatedly appealed to FEMA to remove it from a 100-year flood plain designation; the appeals were granted, according to federal records. Located in “Flash Flood Alley,” the Guadeloupe River tore through part of the camp, taking the lives of 27 campers and counselors and one of the camp’s owners.
The camp charges roughly $8,800 for four weeks and roughly $15,000 for the summer, with an additional $2,000 for horseback riding, a relative who lost a camper told The Center Square. The camp had no alarms, no cell phone tower or communication capabilities, including radios, or evacuation system in place, parents said. Campers were told to stay in their cabins.
A Houston area mother, Lindsey McLeod McCrory, who attended the camp, told news outlets the policy she and others followed during a 1987 flood event was to stay in their cabins. Thirty-eight years later, her daughter, Blakely, died from flood waters that killed the youngest children bunked just feet from the river.
At a Texas Senate committee hearing on Wednesday, Michael McCown, who lost his daughter, Linnie, 8, said, “We trusted Camp Mystic with her precious life, but that trust was broken in the most devastating way. The camp had a heightened duty of care, and they failed to perform. That failure costs 25 campers and two young counselors their lives. No one had to die that day.”
“We did not send Linnie to a war zone. We sent her to camp. We trusted that she would be safe. There was never a question in my mind that a camp would not be prepared.”
The camp’s no cell phone policy should not apply to staff, he said, adding that all camps should have “fully up-to-date” communication systems and “safety measures must not lag behind.” He expressed support for SB 1, which includes “keeping cabins out of floodplains, requiring real emergency plans, mandating weather radios and alert systems,” which he said “should already be the baseline for every summer camp.”
Cici Williams Steward told the committee, “My daughter was stolen from us. Cile’s life ended. Not because of an unavoidable act of nature. But because of preventable failures.”
Her daughter, Cile Steward, 8, is the only Camp Mystic camper still missing. She is one of two known victims who remain unaccounted for.
“Texas summer camps must be properly equipped, trained, and held accountable so that future generations of children can experience the joy of camp without being placed in preventable danger,” Steward said. “Cile’s chance to experience camp only existed because I was ensured that her safety and the safety of all the young girls was paramount. I ask you, what could have been more important than that? But that assurance was betrayed. Obvious common sense safety measures were absent. Protocols that should have been in place were ignored.”
Clark Baker, who lost his daughter, Mary Grace, said, “My daughter should still be here. Her death was 100% preventable. Complacency, among other things, led to the deaths of 27 amazing, innocent, beautiful girls. We can’t let complacency claim the life of another child. We simply ask for mandatory, common sense, state regulated safety protocols for camps.”
“Camps, especially those in areas prone to flash floods, should have adequate warning systems and not build cabins in dangerous floodplains,” he said. “Surely don’t put 8- and 9-year-olds in them. Have a legitimate evacuation plan. Know the plan. Practice the plan. Train workers and counselors to implement the plan.” He said camps “should be held to a standard similar to other institutions that oversee our children.”
Baker, who lives in Beaumont, said, “Hurricane Harvey hit us hard. The very next year we were blasted by Hurricane Imelda. These disasters were both considered 500-year-floods.” Another flood or natural disaster “will happen again,” he said, which is why safety measures must be put in place for 1,100 camps in Texas.
Blake Bonner, who lost his daughter, Lila, said, “Knowing what we know now about that night makes one thing painfully clear. … This was an act of pure complacency. A common tragic theme you will find amongst the 27 angels we lost is that they … followed the rules. They did exactly what they were told to do that morning: stay in their cabins.
“Our daughters paid the ultimate price for their obedience to a plan that was destined to fail. This risk is obviously not theoretical.”
He said what happened was “Preventable failure. It was a failure of planning, prevention, detection and response. Which leads us to the questions that will forever haunt us: Why were our children sleeping in a known high risk flood zone? Why was the stated evacuation plan to stay in place? Why were there no adequate warning systems in the cabins, despite a similar tragedy on the very river as recently as 1987? Why were summer camps entrusted with the care of our most precious gifts, exempt from the basic safety standards required of every daycare and school in Texas?
“These are the questions that demand answers … in the form of meaningful legislative action. To delay action is to tell every parent in Texas that their child’s safety is not a priority. It is to accept a risk that has already been paid by the lives of our daughters.”
Every parent who testified expressed support for SB 1, which includes a series of reforms for camp safety in Texas. The committee advanced the bill, which is expected to pass the legislature and be signed into law.
From LifeSiteNews
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is urging health leaders across the planet to stop including mercury in vaccinations.
“Now that America has removed mercury from all vaccines, I call on every global health authority to do the same — to ensure that no child, anywhere in the world, is ever exposed to this deadly neurotoxin again,” he said.
Kennedy’s comments came in a video he recorded for the Minamata Convention on Mercury. The event is an international gathering aimed at preventing human contact with mercury, which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is one of the top 10 chemicals of major public health concern. The treaty, backed by the United Nations (UN), was first signed in 2013 by over 140 countries.
Kennedy noted that while the group’s goal is no doubt praiseworthy, it has not gone far enough in its efforts.
“Article 4 of the convention calls on parties to cut mercury use by phasing out listed, mercury-added products. But in 2010, as the treaty took shape, negotiators made a major exception. Thimerosal-containing vaccines were carved out of the regulation,” he recalled.
“The same treaty that began to phase out mercury in lamps and cosmetics chose to leave it in products injected into babies, pregnant women, and the most vulnerable among us,” he noted. “We have to ask: Why? Why do we hold a double standard for mercury? Why call it dangerous in batteries, in over-the-counter medications, and make-up but acceptable in vaccines and dental fillings?”
This past summer, Kennedy’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices launched a study to research the vaccine schedule for children. Among other recommendations, the committee advised the removal of thimerosal, a neurotoxic, mercury-containing preservative that had been used in flu shots.
Kennedy noted in his video message that “thimerosal’s own label requires it to be treated as a hazardous material and warns against ingestion,” adding that “there is not a single study that proves it’s safe. That’s why in July of this year the United States closed the final chapter on the use of thimerosal as a vaccine preservative, something that should have happened years ago.”
Kennedy further explained that thimerosal is “a potent neurotoxin, a mutagen, a carcinogen, and an endocrine disrupter” while noting that “safe alternatives” already exist.
“Manufacturers have confirmed that they can produce mercury-free, single dose vaccines without interrupting supply. There is no excuse for inaction or holding stubbornly to the status quo,” he exclaimed. “Now that America has removed mercury from all vaccines, I call on every global health authority and every party to this convention to do the same.”
“Let’s honor and protect humanity, and our children, and creation from mercury,” he concluded.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury went into effect in August 2017. It was initially approved by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, in January 2013. It was adopted in October 2013 at a Diplomatic Conference in Kumamoto, Japan. Per its website, it is named “after the bay in Japan where, in the mid-20th century, mercury-tainted industrial wastewater poisoned thousands of people, leading to severe health damage that became known as the ‘Minamata disease.’”
Censorship Industrial Complex
School Cannot Force Students To Use Preferred Pronouns, US Federal Court Rules
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
“Our system forbids public schools from becoming ‘enclaves of totalitarianism.’”
A federal appeals court in Ohio ruled Thursday that students cannot be forced to use preferred pronouns in school.
Defending Education (DE) filed the suit against Olentangy Local School District (OLSD) in 2023, arguing the district’s anti-harassment policy that requires students to use the “preferred pronouns” of others violates students’ First Amendment rights by “compelling students to affirm beliefs about sex and gender that are contrary to their own deeply held beliefs.” Although a lower court attempted to shoot down the challenge, the appeals court ruled in a 10-7 decision that the school cannot “wield their authority to compel speech or demand silence from citizens who disagree with the regulators’ politically controversial preferred new form of grammar.”
Because the school considers transgender students to be a protected class, students who violated the anti-harassment policy by referring to such students by their biological sex risked punishments such as suspension and expulsion, according to DE.
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“American history and tradition uphold the majority’s decision to strike down the school’s pronoun policy,” the court wrote in its opinion. “Over hundreds of years, grammar has developed in America without governmental interference. Consistent with our historical tradition and our cherished First Amendment, the pronoun debate must be won through individual persuasion, not government coercion. Our system forbids public schools from becoming ‘enclaves of totalitarianism.’”
OLSD did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
“We are deeply gratified by the Sixth Circuit’s intensive analysis not only of our case but the state of student First Amendment rights in the modern era,” Nicole Neily, founder and president of DE, said in a statement. “The court’s decision – and its many concurrences – articulate the importance of free speech, the limits and perils of public schools claiming to act in loco parentis, and the critical role of persuasion – rather than coercion – in America’s public square.”
“Despite its ham-fisted attempt to moot the case, Olentangy School District was sternly reminded by the 6th circuit en banc court that it cannot force students to express a viewpoint on gender identity with which they disagree, nor extend its reach beyond the schoolhouse threshold into matters better suited to an exercise of parental authority,” Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at DE, said in a statement. “A resounding victory for student speech and parental rights was long overdue for families in the school district and we are thrilled the court’s ruling will benefit others seeking to vindicate their rights in the classroom and beyond.”
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