Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act Boosts Requirements to Ensure Safety in Disaster

Houston businessman Matthew Childress should have spent last week moving his 18-year-old daughter Chloe into her first college dorm at the University of Texas.

Instead, Childress was at the Texas Capitol, pleading with lawmakers — alongside dozens of other parents whose daughters died at Camp Mystic — for safety measures including evacuation routes and emergency management plans. Within 24 hours of his testimony, the Texas Legislature would pass a package of youth camp safety laws, promising they wouldn’t let such a senseless tragedy happen again on their watch.

Chloe Childress died because, according to her father, she followed instructions outlined in a vague and flimsy training manual: Camp staff were told that, in case of a flood, they and the campers were to stay in their cabins. So that’s what they did when heavy rains hit the Christian girls’ camp on the Guadalupe River.

Twenty-five campers and two counselors, Kinkaid School graduate Chloe Childress and Memorial High School graduate Katherine Ferruzzo, died at Camp Mystic, among at least 137 total who were swept away in the July 4 Hill Country floods.

The daughters of Camp Mystic were deemed “Heaven’s 27,” the namesake of a series of laws passed Friday mandating that youth camps have disaster plans in place or lose their licenses to operate.

No evacuation route or instructions for seeking higher ground were posted inside the Bubble Inn cabin, where Chloe and Katherine were assigned. Parents of survivors in other cabins told stories last week of children leading each other in song and prayer in what would be some of their final moments.

“We tried our best not to think about the horror, the terror, and the fear that happened in that cabin that night,” Matthew Childress said. “Fourteen girls scrambling for their lives because they did what they were told to do. Chloe and Katherine both died as heroes trying to save all those sweet little girls.”

Lawmakers on Gov. Greg Abbott’s Select Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding heard testimony on August 21 from 16 parents who lost their children in the flood. The following day, state representatives passed an amended hybrid of House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1, known as the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act, which aims to better prepare campgrounds for natural disasters. It’s now awaiting Abbott’s signature.

Ben Landry spoke of his daughter Lainey, a 9-year-old student at St. Michael’s Catholic School in Houston, who also died at Camp Mystic. Landry said the tragedy was preventable and caused by years of neglect, ego and complacency.

“These children were put to sleep in a floodplain with no plan for a flood,” he said.

One grieving mother, CeCe Williams-Steward, said her 8-year-old daughter Cile is still missing. “For Cile, camp meant adventure, memories, friendships, and lessons to carry for a lifetime,” Williams-Steward said. “For me, it meant watching my child grow and learn but always under the assurance that she would be safe. Joy and growth cannot exist without safety.”

“Obvious common-sense safety measures were absent,” she added. “Protocols that should have been in place were ignored. As a result, my daughter was stolen from us. Cile’s life ended not because of an unavoidable act of nature but because of preventable failures. Our Cile was swept away along with other bright, beautiful girls. She was stolen from her family, from her future, from the world she lit up with her independence and spunk.”

Requirements under the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act include installing emergency rooftop egress ladders on cabins in the floodplain, developing an emergency management plan, streamlining notification procedures when a child is injured or missing, increasing training requirements, and maintaining operable weather alert radios in each cabin. Under the new law, the Department of State Health Services will not license camps that don’t meet the requirements.

Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, said camps that opt to “amend themselves out of a floodplain at the federal level” will not be exempt from the state requirements. “The federal government can grant a waiver, but it will not impact these reforms,” he said. “No more waivers. You’re going to [meet the requirements] or you’re going to close down.”

“Had the requirements of [Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act] been in place the night of July 4, I have no doubt that some lives, if not all lives, would have been saved on the camp front,” Perry said.

The new rules will be in place by April 1 or before the next summer camp season begins. Camp Mystic offered its support for the legislation in a social media post but has not publicly released its plans for rebuilding ahead of next summer’s camping season. The most recent public statement on the organization’s website is from July 12.

The camp safety act passed unanimously in the Senate. Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, cast the lone vote against the measure in the House, citing concerns about rigorous amendments proposed by Democratic legislators that he believed would “shut down Christian camps.”

Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, carried the bill in the House and said his granddaughters were picked up from Camp Mystic the weekend before the floods, something he’s thought about every night since July 4.

“Make no mistake, House Bill 1 is fundamentally a bill about failure,” Darby said. “The camp failed these girls. The county failed them. The river authority failed them, and, in a larger sense, their government failed them. In some ways, I know I have failed them. I take this personally. In 10 sessions and now, I think, 16 special sessions, I’ve never filed a bill on campground safety. I could have, but I didn’t.”

Officials from the Department of State Health Services, Camp Longhorn, Camp La Junta, and Texas Association of Campground Owners testified in support of the bill and a DSHS associate deputy commissioner agreed to immediately provide an inventory of resources needed to ensure the new provisions are implemented before the next camping season. An amendment introduced prior to the bill’s passage provides funding for more state inspectors.

Camp Mystic passed an inspection two days prior to the July 4 flood, and legislators said they wanted to understand how that happened. Prior to the passage of the law, camps were required to meet 15 standards and 86 inspection criteria in the state health and safety code. A DSHS spokesman said the agency verifies that camps have an emergency plan to be used in case of a disaster, serious accident, epidemic, or fatality. They also verify a ratio of one supervisor per 10 campers.

“I think we had a lot of complacency and box checking that becomes routine over time,” Perry said.

Testimony from Camp Mystic parents was heart-wrenching, prompting legislators to dab their eyes, apologize for the lack of oversight that’s gone on for years, and promise that such a tragedy would not happen again.

“I can’t relieve you of the guilt and the grief that you feel, but I want you to let us relieve some of the responsibility that you feel,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, told the parents. “We can take that on and we can make sure this doesn’t happen again. This bill is going to pass. These camps are going to be safe, and that’s our commitment to you.”

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, appeared to react emotionally to the words of one parent, Lars Hollis of Bellville, who questioned why the camps didn’t appear to subscribe to a simple mantra he’d learned as a child in Boy Scouts: “Be prepared.”

“I just want you to know you’re being heard,” Kolkhorst said. “You’re impacting lives. This tragedy is going to impact future lives. These lives of these precious children … we will never unhear the stories and we will make changes.”

The parents who testified said they are united in ensuring youth camp safety, noting that they spoke on behalf of many more who were unable to attend the hearing or just couldn’t bear the pain of reliving the loss again.

“My daughter should still be here,” said Clarke Baker of Beaumont, father to 8-year-old Mary Grace. “Her death was 100 percent 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.”

Caitlin and Blake Bonner told stories of their 9-year-old daughter Lila, who they described as a rule follower who would have done what she was told. “I sent her to Camp Mystic to grow closer to God, make lifelong friends, try new activities, encourage independence, to spend time outside away from a screen surrounded by like-minded girls that I knew she would cross paths with for life,” Caitlin Bonner said.

“I naively assumed she was safer at camp than anywhere else. When I think about the trauma and fear that our girls endured, it makes me physically ill. This loss is one that no parent should have to endure.”

Lila’s father Blake Bonner added that what happened at Camp Mystic wasn’t an act of God; it was an act of complacency.

“A common tragic theme you will find among the 27 angels we lost is that they were dutiful. They were perfect children who followed the rules,” he said. “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.”

Brandt Dillon, father of 8-year-old Lucy, a straight-A student at Houston’s Spring Branch ISD, said his family’s “world was shattered by a tragedy that was 100 percent preventable.”

“She was my best friend, my greatest contribution to society,” Dillon said. “Today I sit before you, a broken man. When Lucy left for camp, it was the very first time she had ever slept away from us. We entrusted her care to the camp operators and never for a moment did we believe she would be returned to us in a casket. I will never forget that emotionless call that she was simply unaccounted for.”

Matthew Childress lauded the unity of the parents who lost children at Camp Mystic and their efforts to get the bills passed.

“I’m honored to be the father of a hero,” he said. “These are the realities that we will live with for the rest of our lives. As you said, Senator Kolkhorst, don’t unhear them. We need you to remember them. We need you to be tortured by them, as we are every single day.”

“We have to see this through,” Childress added. “There is nothing we can do to bring our daughters back but we can honor them by ensuring their deaths lead to meaningful change. For now, the time is to act and support SB 1 for my hero Chole Madeline Childress, the rest of Heaven’s 27, and for the millions of campers and parents in the future so this does not happen again.”