More than an hour passed between Camp Mystic receiving a severe flood warning and a decision to evacuate young campers asleep in cabins by the Guadalupe River.

Catherine Wendlandt, a freelance writer in Texas who has written stories for Chron, attended Camp Mystic as a camper from 2004 to '13, then served as a counselor from 2014 to '16. Wendlandt shared this tribute to camp counselors, some of whom lost their lives in catastrophic Guadalupe River flooding on July 4.

Camp Mystic owners successfully appealed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to redesignate some buildings that had been considered part of a flood-hazard zone.