‘We were safe the whole time’
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 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.”
Water races under the bridge over the Medina River leading to Texas Highway 16. The river is about 100 feet downhill from Camp Bandina.
Emergency plan
That year, the camp had evacuated through a 3-mile trail on property owned by surrounding ranches after severe flooding.
After high water on nearby highways marooned campers that July, the electricity failed. About 400 campers and staff members walked to a highway and were bussed about 25 miles to Kerrville, Texas, to meet their families, The Christian Chronicle reported at the time.
The trail is now a part of Bandina’s emergency plan. After the evacuation, the camp signed an agreement with the ranches, allowing campers one-way access through the rugged terrain in the event the camp lost food, water or electricity.
None of that occurred this early July, as Bandina hosted 96 adults and 256 campers from 10 churches. A majority of the campers were from Texas, but some hailed from Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma. The camp also welcomed visitors from South Africa and held Bible classes in Ukrainian for refugee campers.
The Medina River rose to cover the bridge leading out of the camp to a highway, but the water subsided by the time the camp normally would have ended.
All that prevented campers from departing was the fallen tree — but not for long.
Stotts “came down, called the county, and within two minutes the county had a front-end loader there,” said Tom Kimmey, Bandina’s co-director and youth minister for the Buckingham Road Church of Christ in Garland, Texas. “Didn’t even slow down, just drove straight on the road, pushed the tree out of the way.”
So the emergency route was not needed, and buses left the camp’s property on time.
“We had the buses in and the kids gone by 10:30 Saturday morning,” Stotts said. “The next group is already in.”
Still, the heavy rain brought a rush of emotions.
Quincey Spurlock serves as a youth leader and the girls’ youth minister for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston, which sent a group of 137 children and adults to Bandina this past week.
Spurlock was a counselor for a ninth to 12th-grade girls’ cabin. One afternoon during rest time, she worried about the rain while her campers were playing.
“I was sitting on my bunk … and the girls in my cabin are just laughing and talking with each other, and in my mind, all that I’m thinking is, ‘What am I going to do if somehow the river does reach our cabin?’ because we’re the closest cabin to the river,’” Spurlock said. “Thankfully, it never did. … We were safe the whole time.”
Shawn Freeman, youth and bridge minister for the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston, stands next to an uprooted tree that washed onto a bridge during flooding near Camp Bandina.
‘Trying not to watch the news’
On a normal week, campers stroll down the road to the Medina River to swim and play 9 Square.
But the heavy rain that began on Thursday, July 3, caused the river to swell, forcing camp staff to cancel swim time Friday afternoon and move some outdoor activities indoors.
Taylor Colliander, a high school senior from the Memorial church, said camp leadership was open and honest about the rain.
“Whenever they got new information, they would make sure to inform us,” Colliander said. “We could ask questions, and then they would be completely honest. We knew that if something really serious happened, they would tell us.”
The staff decided to withhold information about Camp Mystic from the campers to avoid panic.
But that did not stop the staff from grieving. Kimmey said the staff paused when they heard the news.
“We could ask questions, and then they would be completely honest. We knew that if something really serious happened, they would tell us.”
“We stopped what we were doing, prayed for them, because we were fully aware we were not in a great situation, but we were not at risk,” Kimmey said. “We were just inconvenienced.”
Spurlock said seeing the number of people missing at Camp Mystic was heartbreaking.
“I have been trying not to watch the news because it feels a little traumatizing,” Spurlock said. “The number of people keeps rising every day. … We’re very thankful and blessed that we were not hit as bad as some of these other people were.”
Campers from the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston offer a prayer of thanksgiving after returning home safely from Bandina. They asked God to be with the loved ones of those killed during recent flooding in central Texas.
ANDREW RENEAU is a summer intern for The Christian Chronicle. He is a senior multimedia journalism major at Harding University in Searcy, Ark. He is a member of the Memorial Church of Christ in Houston and has attended Camp Bandina both as a camper and as a counselor.
Welcome to Billionaire Club Co LLC, your gateway to a brand-new social media experience! Sign up today and dive into over 10,000 fresh daily articles and videos curated just for your enjoyment. Enjoy the ad free experience, unlimited content interactions, and get that coveted blue check verification—all for just $1 a month!
Account Frozen
Your account is frozen. You can still view content but cannot interact with it.
Please go to your settings to update your account status.
Open Profile Settings