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A Competence Deficit
The Camp Mystic disaster is a conspicuous example of how people in leadership positions have apparently forgotten how to think.
John Leake
Jul 15, 2025
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In recent years, Dr. McCullough and I have frequently marveled at what appears to be a competence deficit among people who occupy leadership positions. Scarcely a month passes without news of a catastrophe that could have been prevented if those in charge had possessed the competence to assess quickly an unusual or risky situation— or even a clear and present danger—and to take decisive action to avert disaster.
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Now comes the news from Texas that Dick Eastland—executive director of Camp Mystic—received an alert on his phone from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. on July 4 about “life-threatening flash flooding.”
At that point, he “began evaluating whether to evacuate the young campers who were sleeping in their cabins without access to electronics,” according to Eastland family spokesperson Jeff Carr. He only began to evacuate 45 minutes later, after the flood was upon them.
This representation strikes me as unfathomably strange and expressive of incompetence of a mind-boggling scale.
Everyone who has spent some time in the Texas Hill Country understands the meaning of the expression “flash flood”—that is, a creek or a river that floods in a flash, leaving humans and animals who are in the flood plain unable to escape.
Dick Eastland had been at Camp Mystic since 1974 and was certainly aware that the camp and other habitations along the Guadalupe River had been been subjected to flash floods in the past that had swept away and drowned people.
In July 1987, ten children at a church camp in Comfort, Texas— about thirty-nine miles downstream from Mystic—were drowned by a flash flood.
Dick Eastland was a man in charge of protecting the lives of hundreds of young girls—girls sleeping in cabins on the bank of the Guadalupe River, in the flood plain. At 1:14 a.m. he received a warning from the National Weather Service of a “life threatening flash flood.” At that point, he had to have understood that a clear and present danger was upon the girls at Camp Mystic. The only rational course of action was to evacuate immediately to higher ground, above the flood plain.
To be sure, the girls would get soaked by the rain when they left their cabins to move to higher ground. However, the air temperature that night was warm, so the risk hypothermia was negligible compared to the risk of drowning in a flash flood.
Confronted with an unusual and unusually dangerous situation, Dick Eastland apparently lacked the elementary competence to think and act quickly to fulfill his duty. One wonders how many men like him occupy positions of grave responsibility in the United States.
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“But here’s the key difference between carrots and sticks: If you miss out on a carrot today, you’ll probably have a chance at more carrots tomorrow. But if you fail to avoid a stick today – WHAP! – no more carrots forever. Compared to carrots, sticks usually have more urgency and impact.” — Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a senior fellow of the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley.
“To keep our ancestors alive, Mother Nature evolved a brain that tends to make three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources (for dealing with threats and fulfilling opportunities).” — Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a senior fellow of the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley.
The Psychology of Crisis: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. Maybe it should be: Act, Ponder, or Freeze?
Obviously, the bulk of people “freeze”, while some “under” , but a very very few “act”.
In this case, the alert called for IMMEDIATE ACTION.
The damn NWS alert said: “life-threatening flash flooding”! Do you think that was a clue that “action” was required NOW?
“There are no regrets in life. Just lessons.” — Jennifer Aniston
Now in the time, for “After Action Review (AAR)” and “Lessons Learned (LL)”.
I have a few suggestions:
- Replace the executive director of Camp Mystic
- Install flood warning systems where ever necessary
- If the Gooferment politicians and bureaucrats can’t find the money, replace them
- Setup a GOFUNDME for flood warning education
- Every State should have a Disaster Warning System
- Conduct an AAR / LL; not to assign blame — there is more than enough to go around — but to identify SWOTs (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)
- Memorialize the date in the Texas Legislative and Executive calendar — lest we forget
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