Update: The latest flooding news from Texas camps associated with Churches of Christ
Campers and leaders at Bandina and Hensel reflect on their experiences.
AS PROMISED, we have flooding updates from two Texas Bible camps associated with Churches of Christ.
In interviews with our intern Andrew Reneau, Camp Bandina campers and leaders reflect on their experience during heavy rains that claimed more than two dozen lives at Camp Mystic, about 30 miles away.
Meanwhile, Hensel Christian Youth Camp, which is associated with Churches of Christ, sustained damages from flooding. And the body of a 17-year-old area student — not a camper — was found near Hensel’s bonfire after a bridge collapse. Intern Kenzie James has all the details.
If you missed it, read Cheryl Mann Bacon’s report on Churches of Christ in Kerrville working to help with disaster relief.
If you know of ways the flooding has affected members or congregations in our fellowship, please email details to us at letters@christianchronicle.org.
‘We were safe the whole time’
By Andrew Reneau | Intern
Staff whooped and hollered as a skid steer moved a tree blocking Camp Bandina’s front entrance, clearing the way for campers to return home this past weekend.
The tree’s base, which measured more than 6 feet long, was firmly lodged there by water from the rising Medina River on the Texas Hill Country camp’s exit bridge.
Bandina — a Christian youth camp in Bandera, Texas, associated with Churches of Christ — is 30 miles from Camp Mystic, the riverside Christian camp for girls that experienced severe flash flooding this past weekend, resulting in the deaths of at least 27 campers and staff.
While the two camps are physically close, Bandina manager Elaine Stotts said her camp — more than 100 feet uphill from the Medina River — was never in danger.
“The Guadalupe does not feed into the Medina,” Stotts said. “It is spring-fed up at what they call North Cross. Now, we do get rises in the river when we get a lot of rain at the North Cross. Our river did come up, but it wasn’t anything compared to what it was in 2002.”
Creek by Texas camp floods after campers leave
By Kenzie James | Intern
Bruce Beaver drove across Cow Creek Bridge around 4 p.m. on Friday, July 4, after a week at Hensel Christian Youth Camp in Marble Falls, Texas. Less than 24 hours later, the bridge collapsed when Cow Creek flooded.
Beaver, youth minister for the Belton Church of Christ in Texas, was one of about 150 attendees at Hensel for Camp Koinonia Junior Week. That is the Belton church’s camp for rising fifth through eighth grade students.
The campers and staff did not experience any of the flooding while at the camp. Beaver said it rained on Thursday and Friday, but the camp schedule did not change other than moving a few activities indoors.
“When I got up Friday morning, I noticed the front wasn’t really moving,” Beaver said. “It was just hovering over central Texas. The predictions didn’t have it moving forward.”
The camp staff called the sheriff’s office multiple times Friday to ask about flash flood warnings. There were no warnings at 10 a.m. or 11:15 a.m., Beaver said, but the staff was warned in the afternoon to watch for flooding as campers prepared to leave. Beaver was the last to leave the campgrounds at 4 p.m. during a break in the rain, and he said there was no flooding when he left.
The Hensel campgrounds were not affected until the creek flooded Friday night, but Belton elder Scott Cox said he heard about the flood’s initial damage around Texas earlier in the day.