Despite the absence of warning by local authorities, camp officials at Mo-Ranch acted quickly on their own, relocating about 70 children and adults staying overnight in a building near the river.

Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic's buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the ...

“It’s hard not to feel like you are surrounded by a higher power when you’re down there, because it’s just so beautiful,” my friend Olivia Marrus told me.