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Camp Mystic’s owner warned of floods for decades. Then the river killed him

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Dick Eastland warned for decades about the hidden dangers of the beautiful but volatile Guadalupe River, a peril he saw firsthand while running his family’s youth camp alongside its banks.

Eastland saw floods damage Camp Mystic again and again – and his pregnant wife was even airlifted to a hospital while the camp in central Texas was cut off by floodwaters.

He successfully pushed for a new flood warning system after 10 children at a nearby camp were swept to their deaths in 1987, and in recent years served on the board of the local river authority as it supported renewed efforts to improve warnings on the Guadalupe.

“The river is beautiful,” Eastland told the Austin American-Statesman in 1990. “But you have to respect it.”

But after 27 people were killed at Camp Mystic in last week’s cataclysmic flooding – along with Eastland himself, who died while trying to rescue his young campers – the scale of the tragedy highlights potential missed opportunities by Camp Mystic’s owners and government officials to better mitigate those risks.

About a decade after it was installed, the warning system Eastland had championed in the late ‘80s became antiquated and broken. The river authority ultimately shut it down in 1999, saying it was “unreliable with some of the system’s stations not reporting information,” according to an article in the Kerrville Daily Times.

Yet periodic attempts to adopt a more modern flood-monitoring system, including one with warning sirens that might have alerted campers last week, repeatedly failed to gain traction – stalled by low budgets, some local opposition and a lack of state support.

At Camp Mystic, meanwhile, several of the cabins that were hit hardest in the flooding were in an area identified by the federal government as the highest-risk location for inundations from the Guadalupe. Even as the camp built new cabins in a less-risky flood zone elsewhere on its property, nothing was done to relocate the buildings in the most danger.

“Camp officials might have not been aware of flood risk when they first built the cabins,” before the county even had flood maps, said Anna Serra-Llobet, a University of California-Berkeley researcher who studies flood risk. But after the recent construction, she said, officials should have realized they were in an area of “severe hazard.”

Eastland has been praised as a hero for his efforts to save campers on Friday and remembered as a beloved figure by generations who spent their summers in the idyllic riverside refuge. His legacy is less clear as a public steward of the sometimes deadly river that ultimately took his life.

“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way—saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,” his grandson George Eastland wrote in an Instagram tribute. “Although he no longer walks this earth, his impact will never fade in the lives he touched.”

Camp Mystic did not respond to a request for comment.

Camp Mystic has a long history with flooding, going back to just a few years after it was established 99 years ago.

In 1932, flood waters “swept away” several cabins at the camp and led campers to evacuate across the river by canoe, according to an article in the Abilene Daily Reporter. A counselor told the Austin American-Statesman at the time that campers might “have drowned if we had gone out the front door and walked face-into a sheet of water!”

In 1978, an article in the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported that Camp Mystic was “the most severely damaged” of local summer camps affected by a flood that year. A separate article reported that five Camp Mystic counselors “had their automobiles swept into the Guadalupe River” by flood waters that year.

And in 1985, Eastland’s wife Tweety, then pregnant with their fourth child, had to be airlifted from Camp Mystic to a hospital due to floodwaters, local news reported.

A volunteer holds a Camp Mystic t-shirt and pink backpack in Comfort, Texas, as search and rescue efforts continued on July 6.

One of the region’s most devastating floods – until last week’s Fourth of July disaster – came in 1987, when 10 children attending a different camp in the area were killed by floodwaters during a rushed evacuation.

Eastland, who at the time was serving on the board of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which manages the river, pushed for a new flood warning system. In newspaper articles, he described a computer-powered system that would lead to automatic alerts if water levels on the Guadalupe rose beyond a set limit.

The proposal was delayed, but officials eventually created a system of 21 gauges up and down the Guadalupe and its tributaries.

Even as Eastland voiced pride in the new system, he was quick to remind the public of the Guadalupe’s deadly power.

“I’m sure there will be other drownings,” Eastland said in a 1990 interview with the Austin American-Statesman. “People don’t heed the warnings.”

In the following years, the early flood warning system that Eastland advocated for – and was once considered state-of-the-art – started to suffer problems. In April 1998, the company that maintained the system “closed its doors without notice,” and the gauge system soon stopped functioning because of lack of maintenance, the Kerrville Daily Times reported.

In February 1999, the river authority shut the system down because it had become “unreliable with some of the system’s stations not reporting information,” and board members worried about “liability concerns that the system would send ‘false signals,’” according to an article in the Times.

A handful of river gauges remain in service on the Guadalupe today, but the county lacks a full-scale warning system to broadcast public alerts when floodwaters rise.

Kerr County officials, along with the river authority that Eastland periodically served on, worked to change that over the last decade, searching for funding for a flood warning system that included more river gauges and a network of sirens.

But they found themselves struggling to overcome funding deficits and opposition from some skeptical residents.

Grant applications for the system were denied by the state in 2016 and 2017, and the authority later decided not to pursue a separate grant after realizing that it would only cover five percent of the system’s cost.

Around the same time, Camp Mystic was embarking on an expansion project. As the number of girls attending the camp grew over the years – leading to waitlists to get in each summer – the camp built more than a dozen new cabins farther south of the Guadalupe River alongside the smaller Cypress Creek.

Some of those cabins were located in an area that the federal government has determined has a 1% chance of flooding each year, which would have required officials to get special approval from the county government to build there.

But the risk was even higher at some of Camp Mystic’s cabins closest to the Guadalupe, several of which are located inside the river’s “regulatory floodways” – the areas that flood first and are most dangerous – according to federal flood maps. Those cabins have been around for decades, historical aerial photos show, apparently before the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s first floodzone maps were developed.

Dealing with preexisting structures like these inside risky floodzones is especially challenging, said Serra-Llobet, the UC Berkeley flood expert.

“When they did the construction of the recent buildings, they should have seen the FEMA maps,” Serra-Llobet said. That, she said, was a “window of opportunity” where camp officials could have realized their decades-old dorms were in a high-hazard zone and acted to address it. Camp Mystic could have relocated the buildings to higher ground, or just turned them into structures for recreational activities and made sure that campers were sleeping in safer areas, she said.

Still, Serra-Llobet argued that Kerr County should move past the “blame game” that comes after any disaster and focus on the lessons that could be learned for protecting people from floods going forward.

It’s not clear whether Eastland personally grappled with the high-risk flood zone running through his own campground. But in recent years, he was part of continued efforts for an improved flood warning system for the region.

Eastland returned to the river authority’s board in 2022 after being appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. After the previous setbacks, the board this year moved forward with a proposal to create a new “centralized dashboard” of rainfall, river depth and other data sources “to support local flood monitoring and emergency response,” according to the county government.

In April, the river authority voted to hire a firm to develop the data system and had planned to begin work this month. That was postponed after last week’s disastrous flooding.

After Eastland was found dead, tributes have rolled in from his colleagues, community members and former campers whose lives he touched over the decades at Camp Mystic.

“Although I am devastated, I can’t say I’m surprised that you sacrificed your life with the hopes of someone else’s being saved,” Eastland’s grandson wrote in his Instagram post.

April Ancira spent summers from the age of 8 to 14 at Camp Mystic. In an interview, she remembered Eastland helping her catch a big fish – and being just as thrilled as she was when she successfully reeled it in.

“My memories of him wrapping his arms around so many campers and being so excited to see them excel is incredible,” she said.

Austin Dickson, who served on the river authority board along with Eastland and sat next to him at board meetings, remembered him as a “pillar in our county and our community” who had championed a recent effort to create a new park along the river.

“So many people say, ‘Mystic is my heaven,’ or ‘Mystic is a dreamland,’ and I think that’s true,” he said. “That’s Dick and Tweety’s life’s work to make that true.”

CNN’s Allison Gordon and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed reporting.





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Aryna Sabalenka Says It ‘Pissed’ Her Off That American Amanda Anisimova Celebrated Early in Upset Wimbledon Win

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  • Tennis star Aryna Sabalenka is taking a difficult Wimbledon loss in stride while recounting a few particularly challenging moments during a match against American winner Amanda Anisimova
  • Speaking with reporters later, Sabalenka ultimately laughed off a moment that “pissed” her off during a set, and said she used her feelings as fuel
  • After the loss, Sabalenka tried to focus her remarks on self-reflection and moving forward

Tennis star Aryna Sabalenka is taking a difficult Wimbledon loss in stride while responding to a few particularly tough moments during a match against American winner Amanda Anisimova.

Overall, she accepted the defeat and said Anisimova, 23, “was a better player” that day — but recalled a frustrating instance during a set.

“I was just trying to chase the ball, and yeah, she was already celebrating it, and I was like, ‘I mean, that’s a bit early.’ But then she kind of pissed me off saying, ‘That’s what she [Sabalenka] does all the time,’ ” Sabalenka, 27, told reporters.

Still, she tried to channel the moment as fuel going forward.

“It actually helped me to keep fighting, and I’m like, okay, now I’m going to show you the tennis, you know? So I came back because I got really angry in that moment. So probably in the third set, I should’ve remembered,” she said, laughing off the moment.

Sabalenka lost the semifinal match to Anisimova in three sets, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

In response to a reporter’s question, the Belarusian pro, ranked No. 1 in the world, addressed another tense moment when the ball hit the net and dropped over.

“For sure she didn’t hear me, but I was just like, ‘You don’t want to say sorry?’ But she just wanted, I guess badly, to win this match and it’s on her,” Sabalenka said. “If she doesn’t feel like saying sorry, like she barely got that point and she didn’t feel like saying sorry for that tricky situation, that’s on her.”

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The two women embraced each other after their competition on Thursday, July 10. Following the loss, Sabalenka tried to focus her remarks on self-reflection and moving forward.

“Still a lot of things to be proud of, and this experience shows that next year I’m only hungrier and angrier and it’s only these tough defeats help me to come back much stronger, so I have huge hopes for the next year,” she said with a smile.



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Walmart recalls 850,000 water bottles after two consumers suffer vision loss from ejecting caps

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NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart is recalling about 850,000 stainless steel water bottles because the lid can “forcefully eject” and unexpectedly strike consumers — resulting in permanent vision loss for two people to date.

The recall covers Walmart’s “Ozark Trail 64 oz Stainless Steel Insulated Water Bottles,” which have been sold at the chain’s stores across the country since 2017. According to a notice published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Thursday, these products pose “serious impact and laceration hazards.”

That’s because when a consumer attempts to open the bottles “after food, carbonated beverages or perishable beverages, such as juice or milk, are stored inside over time,” the lid can eject forcefully, the CPSC notes.

As of Thursday’s announcement, Walmart had received three reports of consumers who were injured after being struck in the face by these lids when opening their bottles. And two of those people “suffered permanent vision loss after being struck in the eye,” the CPSC added.

Consumers are urged to stop using the now-recalled Ozark Trail bottles — and contact Walmart for a full refund. Shoppers can also bring the products to their local Walmart store for that compensation.

The bottles being recalled can also be identified by their model number, 83-662 — which doesn’t appear on the product itself, but would show on packaging. The stainless-steel base is silver and the lid is a black, one-piece screw cap. There is also an Ozark Trail logo embedded on the side of the 64-ounce bottle.

The Associated Press reached out to Walmart for further comments on Friday.





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Justin Bieber’s surprise album gets lukewarm reviews

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Ian Youngs

Culture reporter

Getty Images Justin Bieber performs on day three of Sziget Festival 2022 on Óbudai-sziget Island on August 12, 2022 in Budapest, Hungary.Getty Images

Justin Bieber has surprised fans by releasing a new album titled Swag, his first in four years – but critics have not been bowled over by the comeback.

In a three-star review, the Guardian said it has “moments of brilliance”, but is “no long-awaited masterpiece”.

The Telegraph gave two stars, agreeing that it is “not the return of a pop titan”, and describing it as “an uncomfortable and unfiltered cry for help”.

The paper pointed to spoken-word interludes including the “self-pitying, super-short Therapy Session”, on which he addresses the toll of press speculation about his mental health; and another titled Standing On Business, which features a viral clip in which he confronted a photographer.

The video, filmed on Father’s Day, showed the exasperated singer saying: “I’m a dad. I’m a husband. You’re not getting it. It’s not clocking to you. I’m standing on business.”

The video was widely circulated and remixed online, and now features as part of the promotion of the new album as well as in the track listing.

“Standing on business” has gained currency as slang for standing up for yourself and taking care of your responsibilities and ambitions.

‘Saccharine cliche’

With a run time of just under an hour, the teen icon-turned-megastar collaborates with a host of rappers on Swag including Sexxy Red, Cash Cobain and Gunna.

Its title appears to hark back to the singer’s 2012 hit Boyfriend, featuring the line “swag, swag, swag, on you”.

Promotional pictures shared by the Canadian singer feature his wife, Hailey Bieber, and their son – at points being held over his head.

The Guardian’s Rachel Aroesti wrote that the album “opens extremely promisingly with All I Can Take, a hauntological twist on spotless, energetic 1980s R&B”.

Overall, it’s “very considered, cleverly nostalgic and subtly satisfying – there’s not a craven chart smash in earshot”, she wrote.

“Lyrically, however, Swag isn’t such a classy and thoughtful affair. Dadz Love is an inane celebration of Bieber’s nascent fatherhood that essentially just repeats the title into meaninglessness.

“The other love songs – which are addressed to his wife, Hailey, whose viral lip gloss-holding phone case gets a shout-out on Go Baby – rarely transcend superficial, saccharine cliche.

“But they are at least preferable to the eye-watering spoken-word segments.”

‘Wiping the slate clean’

The Independent’s Adam White awarded two stars, saying the album is “just further confirmation of the artistic lethargy that has plagued his most recent work, and an unfortunate insight into a man who seems awkwardly caught between sex, God, and self-pity”.

Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger said it was “Bieber as we’ve never really heard him before – stripped of most of his usual big pop trappings, with a much more organic-sounding, alt-R&B-focused sound”.

But fans hoping for an album full of songs like his 2015 smash hit Sorry may be disappointed, he added.

The album was awarded 7/10 by Clash magazine’s Robin Murray, who said its 21 tracks have lyrics “that move from an emotive depiction of fatherhood through to in-jokes”.

“Stylistically, it broadly sits on 90s-adjacent synth pop – sometimes fixed in its approach, sometimes vaporised. It’s always colourful, and – for all its breadth – it’s always entertaining.”

However, Murray added: “One of the core strengths of SWAG is also its weakness: there’s a lot of it. His first album in four years, this feels like an outpouring of ideas, a wiping clean of the slate.”

@lilbieber Justin Bieber stands with his back to the camera in a black and white image. Next to him is his wife Hailey Bieber holding a baby. The word "SWAG" is written on the right hand side of the image. Rolling hills are pictured in the distance.@lilbieber

The album drop also comes on the back of fans’ worries for Bieber’s state of mind. In recent months, the singer has shared multiple posts online about the intrusion of paparazzi in his personal life.

Bieber’s marriage has also been under the spotlight after another controversial social media post. The singer celebrated his wife featuring on the cover of Vogue with a social media post detailing an argument between them.

The lyrics of Daisies, the second song on Swag, appear to allude to the couple’s relationship with “falling petals do you love me or not” and “you said forever babe, did you mean it or not?”

Other song titles on the album seem to touch on religious themes including Devotion, Soulful and Forgiveness, in keeping with Bieber’s Christian faith.

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