Dick Eastland, the Camp Mystic owner who pushed for flood alerts on the Guadalupe River, was killed in last week’s deadly surge.

Some camps in the region had to be evacuated, and local newspapers described how Camp Mystic was among those cut off from the outside world. According to a Kerr County history book, floodwaters at Camp Mystic almost reached the top of the dining hall’s stairs.

The survival of people in local camps and low-lying areas depended not on official evacuations but on whether they were paying attention, on their own, to weather alerts in the middle of the night.