AUSTIN, TX — Security guard in Camp Mystic The night of last year’s deadly floods she acknowledged Wednesday that if a general evacuation order had been issued early in the storm, lives could have been saved.
Glenn Goenke, who helped move some of the girls to a two-story building before getting stuck inside a cabin himself, also saved a group of campers when he told them to run to higher ground as floodwaters rose.
He testified at the end of a Three-day hearing In a legal battle between camp operators, who want to reopen the Christian camp for girls this summer, and the families of some of the victims who died in the Fourth of July flood that swept through the Guadalupe River in the predawn hours.
Goenke, who was called as a witness for the camp operators, said it was his decision to ask a group of campers to scramble on foot up the hill as floodwaters rose, and was not an order from camp managers or authorities.
He did not recall that camp administrators trained campers, counselors and staff on where to go in the event of an emergency evacuation.
The plan to reopen the camp has angered the families of the girls who were killed, and the camp’s license is still under review by state health regulators. A judge last month ordered the camp to preserve the damaged areas as evidence of pending lawsuits. This ruling is under appeal.
Produced the hearing The most comprehensive details From camp staff to what happened in the flood, including missed opportunities to prepare for the storm, and delayed evacuation decisions.
Describing the storm that raged through the camp, Goenke said he first joined camp directors Dick and Edward Eastland in keeping some of the girls out of their cabins. But Goenke later abandoned his truck when the water rose too high to drive.
Now on foot, Goenki ordered a group of young girls to run to higher ground. He returned to another cabin where he was soon trapped in waist-deep water. Storage boxes were thrown around the stream before being sucked up and away.
Goenki ordered the girls in the cabin to sit on air mattresses, and they remained floating there for several hours.
“It was a long night,” Goenke said. “We were getting bitten by fire ants. There were spiders… The girls did everything I asked them to do.” None of the girls in that cabin died.
Goenke said they left at dawn. Then he met Katie Eastland, one of the camp’s directors, near the two-story recreation building where about a hundred girls had escaped the flood.
“I said you could have had a million different evacuation plans, and nothing would have worked,” Goenke testified.
Lawyers for the families focused on the lack of a detailed evacuation plan and the failure to send orders to exit the cabins. A short emergency notice was posted at the cabins, which had passed state inspection just two days earlier, and campers were asked to remain in their cabins until they received instructions from staff.
In everything, 25 camps Two teenage counselors were killed. Camp co-owner Dick Eastland also died.
“You can blame Mother Nature or God Almighty, but if anyone had used loudspeakers or a walkie-talkie and told them to leave before 3 a.m., they would have been alive,” said Brad Beckworth, the family attorney for Seely Steward, 8, the only camper whose body has not yet been recovered.
Juenke defended his actions and those of the staff that night.
“We did everything we could do in the time we had,” Goenke said.