Camp Mystic Installs 8-Foot Flood Warning Towers After Deadly Hill Country Flash Floods

Kerrville, Texas — Along the banks of the Guadalupe River, 8-foot aluminum towers are being erected as part of a new flash-flood warning system at the site of one of the deadliest flash floods in Texas history.

In early July, catastrophic flash flooding swept through the Texas Hill Country, killing more than 130 people, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, a private Christian summer camp for girls. Officials said the Guadalupe River rose extremely rapidly in the hours before the tragedy, leaving little time for evacuation.

Ian Cunningham, founder and CEO of River Sentry and a Navy veteran and commercial pilot, is leading a small team installing towers at Camp Mystic's Cypress Lake property, which sits uphill from Camp Mystic Guadalupe — the riverside site where the fatal flooding occurred. Camp Mystic has announced plans to reopen the Cypress Lake site next summer while implementing additional safety upgrades.

How the Towers Work

The towers, manufactured from aluminum and standing roughly 8 feet tall, are designed to detect sudden rises in water and activate audible and visual alarms even if local power or cell networks fail. A private foundation funded 100 towers at an estimated cost of $7,500 each; Cunningham had originally planned to donate the units himself.

The sirens are selected to produce about 75 decibels inside a building to rouse sleeping occupants. Towers are positioned to trigger when sensors detect water rising at approximately one foot per minute; placed five feet lower than the structures they protect (for example, cabins), they are intended to give roughly five minutes' notice to evacuate.

"That's another reason why we like this product, is it will react and do what it's supposed to do without someone needing to be awake to set off the alarm," said Britt Eastland, director of Camp Mystic Cypress Lake.

Design And Deployment

Working out of an airplane hangar near Austin, Cunningham and his team combined off-the-shelf water sensors commonly used on fishing boats with lights and sirens salvaged from emergency vehicles to create a rugged, low-dependency warning system. The prototype and initial assembly took less than two months, with a priority on ensuring operation during power outages or when cell towers are down.

"You know, at a basic level, we're providing a smoke detector for floods on your property perimeter," Cunningham said. "I didn't approach this like a business — I approached it as a way to save lives. My two daughters are campers; I can't imagine what those parents are going through."

Policy And Legal Context

The tower installations supplement new state requirements enacted after the disaster. In September, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed two laws requiring camps to install and maintain emergency alert systems, train staff on evacuation routes, site cabins away from flood plains and submit to state inspections, among other provisions. Camp Mystic has pledged to exceed those requirements.

Families of several campers and counselors who died filed a lawsuit in Travis County District Court last month, alleging gross negligence and reckless disregard for safety and seeking accountability for what they describe as an "entirely preventable tragedy."

The installation of these towers represents one of several efforts to reduce the risk of future flash-flood tragedies by combining community funding, rapid prototyping and redundancy-focused design. Camp leaders say the system provides an additional, automatic layer of protection intended to warn sleeping occupants when sudden water rise threatens camp structures.