I think the problem is that there are a bunch of contradictory and conflicting things that are all true simultaneously:
1. The Eastlands are in their hearts good people who loved the kids who came to Camp Mystic.
2. The Eastlands were also flawed people who had neither the knowledge of flood hazards nor the preparedness of a good emergency plan that they should have had for a camp their size that had been around as long as they have.
3. The Eastlands didn't take some of the simple actions that could have resulted in saving all of the lives that night (using the loudspeaker system, summoning staff from other locations to help evacuate cabins).
4. Dick Eastland, his son, and Glenn acted heroically in trying to save all of the campers they could. Whatever else you think about his actions leading up to that night, Dick died as a hero trying to save little girls from the floodwaters.
5. The flood that came was something that nobody along the river was ready for or expected when they went to bed that night. The water rose faster and higher than any flood before it in that area. There were certainly bigger floods downstream, but they rose to those levels over the course of days, not minutes.
6. Knowing the cabins were above the 100 year floodplain should not have made them qualified for sheltering in place in the case of flooding. It was a flawed plan from the beginning to assume the kids would be safe there.
7. The Eastlands have not handled the family, the media, or the requests from thousands of other families well in navigating whether, when, or how to reopen the camp.
8. For people whose lives revolved around the camp, who lost the acknowledged driving force behind running the camp, father, and husband, and who are simultaneously despised by some, while joined in grief by others, the Eastlands were not equipped to navigate the public relations aspects of what has come since the flood. It doesn't make them suddenly bad people. They are just good people way over their heads who are probably getting very contradictory advice from different groups (lawyers telling them to admit or say nothing of consequence to families that are suing them, other families pleading with them to reopen, and everything in between).
It is up to the rest of us to register all of that information and decide what it means to us. My personal take is that the Eastlands should not run a camp ever again. Yes, it is a 1 strike you are out thing, but some of their failures are too egregious, even if they undoubtedly have learned very harsh lessons from their mistakes, to ever trust them to operate such a large enterprise safely in the future.
On the other hand, I recoil a bit from wanting them to be personally ruined financially or otherwise. I fall back to that first thing on the list. They were good people who loved the kids that camped with them and made an indelible mark on thousands of lives. One very bad mistake, however careless it was or horrifying the result, doesn't change that fact. It changes what I want to see or not see from them in the future, but it doesn't change who they were on July 3rd.
I want to see change in the way camps prepare for disasters and emergencies. I want to see the lives that were lost remembered in a positive and uplifting way that glorifies their short time on the planet. But I also want the kids who made lifelong friends at Mystic to still have that chance in the future. Seeing the property sold off to the Basses or some other rich investor instead of being a camp just feels sad to me. I don't want the Eastlands to profit from that in the future, but I stop short of feeling like they should be destroyed personally or financially. In the end, it was truly a once in a lifetime flood and their errors and flaws were not willful neglect or deliberate malfeasance that put the lives of kids at risk, but unintentional acts based on ignorance of the true risks.
I am sure I will be called an apologist or Eastland fan or whatever. I have no dog in the fight, and I struggle with anger at how things went down there. There were so many chances to have done things differently that would have saved all of the lives. But I keep going back to them being good people who were in over their head, being led by a control freak who was not evil, just ignorant of things that he needed to know more about.
