Camp Mystic in Texas has withdrawn its application to reopen this summer, nearly a year after floods killed 25 campers and two counselors. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why Texas Hill Country floods are becoming deadlier, how climate change is driving this, and what it means for communities built around rivers.
El campamento Camp Mystic en Texas retiró su solicitud para reabrir este verano, casi un año después de las inundaciones que mataron a 25 niños y dos monitores. Fletcher y Octavio exploran por qué las inundaciones del Hill Country de Texas son cada vez más mortales, qué papel juega el cambio climático, y qué significa esto para las comunidades que viven junto a los ríos.
6 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| inundación | flood | Las inundaciones del verano pasado fueron muy peligrosas en el Hill Country de Texas. |
| dejar de | to stop doing (something), to cease | El campamento dejó de operar después de las inundaciones. |
| alerta | warning, alert | Las alertas llegaron demasiado tarde para salvar a todos. |
| riesgo | risk | Vivir cerca del río tiene un riesgo muy alto cuando hay tormentas fuertes. |
| tormenta | storm | La tormenta fue muy intensa y el río subió varios metros en pocas horas. |
| tradición | tradition | Camp Mystic era una tradición para muchas familias de Texas desde hace casi cien años. |
I grew up reading about the Guadalupe River.
Not because I'm from there, but because I moved to Austin twenty years ago, and in Texas, rivers have a reputation.
The Guadalupe especially.
And last July, that reputation became something much darker.
Sí, el río Guadalupe.
Yes, the Guadalupe River.
En julio del año pasado, las inundaciones mataron a 25 niños y a dos monitores en un campamento de verano que se llama Camp Mystic.
In July last year, the floods killed 25 children and two counselors at a summer camp called Camp Mystic.
Era una tragedia terrible.
It was a terrible tragedy.
And now, this week, the camp has officially withdrawn its application to reopen this summer.
Which on one level is understandable, maybe even inevitable.
But it also made me stop and think about what that decision represents beyond the camp itself.
Claro.
Right.
Porque Camp Mystic no es un lugar cualquiera.
Because Camp Mystic isn't just any place.
Es un campamento muy famoso en Texas.
It's a very well-known camp in Texas.
Muchas familias mandaron a sus hijas allí durante décadas.
Many families sent their daughters there for decades.
Era una tradición.
It was a tradition.
Since 1927, actually.
Nearly a hundred years on that stretch of the Guadalupe.
Generations of Texas families.
And I want to talk about the climate angle here, because that's what keeps pulling at me, but let's first make sure people understand what actually happened last July.
Fue muy rápido.
It was very fast.
En el Hill Country de Texas, cuando llueve mucho en las montañas, el agua llega al río muy rápidamente.
In the Texas Hill Country, when it rains heavily in the hills, water reaches the river very quickly.
En pocas horas, el río subió varios metros.
In a few hours, the river rose several meters.
Los niños estaban durmiendo.
The children were sleeping.
That's the thing about flash floods in that part of Texas.
They don't announce themselves.
You can have a perfectly clear night at the camp, and twenty miles upstream it's raining in a way that rewrites geography.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y esto no es nuevo.
And this isn't new.
El río Guadalupe tiene una historia larga de inundaciones peligrosas.
The Guadalupe River has a long history of dangerous floods.
En 1987, también hubo una inundación muy grave en la misma zona.
In 1987, there was also a very serious flood in the same area.
Pero en los últimos años, las inundaciones son más frecuentes y más fuertes.
But in recent years, the floods are more frequent and more intense.
The 1987 flood.
I was a young reporter when that happened.
Killed ten people downstream near Comfort, Texas.
At the time it felt like a once-in-a-generation event.
Except it keeps happening.
Sí, y esto es importante.
Yes, and this is important.
Cuando los científicos hablan del cambio climático y las inundaciones, no dicen que el cambio climático creó estas inundaciones.
When scientists talk about climate change and floods, they don't say climate change created these floods.
Dicen que las hace peores.
They say it makes them worse.
Más agua, más rápido.
More water, faster.
That distinction matters.
And I think it gets lost in the public conversation.
People want a clean cause-and-effect, and the reality is messier and in some ways more frightening.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
El aire más caliente tiene más humedad.
Warmer air holds more moisture.
Cuando hay una tormenta, puede caer más agua en menos tiempo.
When there's a storm, more water can fall in less time.
Los expertos tienen un nombre para esto: lluvia de alta intensidad.
Experts have a name for this: high-intensity rainfall.
Y Texas está en una zona donde este fenómeno es muy peligroso.
And Texas is in a region where this phenomenon is very dangerous.
There's actually a term geographers use for what the Hill Country sits in, which is the Flash Flood Alley.
It runs from Del Rio up through Austin and all the way to Dallas.
The combination of topography and weather patterns makes it one of the most flood-prone regions on earth.
Y la gente vive allí desde hace muchos años.
And people have lived there for many years.
Los campamentos de verano, las casas junto al río, los hoteles.
Summer camps, riverside houses, hotels.
Hay una cultura de vivir cerca del agua.
There's a culture of living near the water.
Es muy bonito, pero también es peligroso.
It's very beautiful, but it's also dangerous.
That tension is ancient in Texas.
I've talked to ranchers in the Hill Country who've had the same land in their family for four or five generations, and every single one of them has a flood story.
Multiple flood stories.
It's part of the identity of the place.
Pero antes, esas inundaciones grandes pasaban cada diez o veinte años.
But before, those big floods happened every ten or twenty years.
Ahora, los científicos dicen que los eventos extremos pasan cada cinco años, o menos.
Now, scientists say extreme events happen every five years, or less.
El intervalo entre desastres es más corto.
The interval between disasters is getting shorter.
And that changes everything about how you build, how you plan, how you insure.
A once-in-fifty-years flood can be absorbed by a community.
A once-in-five-years flood cannot.
That's a fundamentally different kind of problem.
Las compañías de seguros ya lo saben.
The insurance companies already know it.
En muchas partes de Texas y Florida, los seguros contra inundaciones son muy caros o ya no existen.
In many parts of Texas and Florida, flood insurance is very expensive or simply doesn't exist anymore.
Las compañías no quieren pagar porque los riesgos son demasiado grandes.
Companies don't want to pay because the risks are too great.
I wrote a piece about this a few years back, actually.
The retreat of private insurers from high-risk zones.
There's a phrase that's started appearing in actuarial reports, which is 'uninsurable risk,' and it's showing up more and more in places people consider home.
Eso es muy serio.
That's very serious.
Porque si no puedes asegurar tu casa, no puedes venderla fácilmente.
Because if you can't insure your house, you can't easily sell it.
Y si no puedes venderla, estás atrapado.
And if you can't sell it, you're trapped.
Las comunidades más pobres son las que más sufren este problema.
The poorest communities suffer this problem the most.
Let's bring it back to Camp Mystic for a moment, because there's something specific about camps and rivers that I think is worth sitting with.
These places were built on a particular idea of nature, of outdoor life, of what summer should be.
Sí.
Yes.
En España también tenemos campamentos junto a los ríos, en los Pirineos, en el norte.
In Spain we also have camps by rivers, in the Pyrenees, in the north.
La idea es la misma: los niños aprenden a nadar, a caminar por la montaña, a vivir sin tecnología por unas semanas.
The idea is the same: children learn to swim, to hike in the mountains, to live without technology for a few weeks.
Es una tradición muy bonita.
It's a very beautiful tradition.
And there's an assumption baked into that tradition, which is that nature is the backdrop.
Challenging sometimes, but fundamentally stable.
The river is there.
The river is the point.
And what climate change is doing is making the river an unpredictable protagonist instead of a setting.
Eso es una buena manera de describirlo.
That's a good way to describe it.
El río ya no es solo parte del paisaje.
The river is no longer just part of the landscape.
Es un actor principal.
It's the main actor.
Y algunos campamentos en Europa también están pensando en esto.
And some camps in Europe are also thinking about this.
Hay campamentos que cambiaron su ubicación porque el riesgo era demasiado grande.
There are camps that changed their location because the risk was too great.
Octavio, let me ask you something.
When you were covering environmental politics at El País, what was the gap you noticed most between what scientists were saying and what policymakers were willing to hear?
La velocidad.
The speed.
Los científicos decían: 'esto va a pasar en diez o veinte años.' Y los políticos pensaban: 'veinte años, muy bien, hay tiempo.' Pero los eventos extremos llegaron antes.
Scientists said: 'this is going to happen in ten or twenty years.' And politicians thought: 'twenty years, fine, there's time.' But the extreme events arrived sooner.
El problema es que la política funciona en ciclos de cuatro años, y el clima no.
The problem is that politics works in four-year cycles, and the climate doesn't.
That mismatch of timescales.
I've heard that from climate scientists going back twenty-five years.
The science operates on one clock, democratic politics on another, and the gap between them is where the damage happens.
Y los niños de Camp Mystic pagaron ese precio.
And the children of Camp Mystic paid that price.
Eso es lo más difícil de este tema.
That's the hardest part of this topic.
No son estadísticas.
They're not statistics.
Son personas reales, familias reales que perdieron a sus hijos.
They're real people, real families who lost their children.
Twenty-five children and two adults.
I keep coming back to that number.
And what I find myself thinking about is the question of accountability.
Not blame, exactly, but accountability.
Who builds a camp on a floodplain, and why, and who signs off on that?
Esta es una pregunta muy importante.
This is a very important question.
En muchos países, incluida España, las reglas sobre construcción cerca de los ríos son más estrictas ahora.
In many countries, including Spain, the rules about building near rivers are stricter now.
Pero Camp Mystic existía desde 1927.
But Camp Mystic existed since 1927.
Las reglas de entonces eran muy diferentes.
The rules back then were very different.
That's the inherited-risk problem.
You build something in an era when the risk is manageable, and over decades the risk profile of the land changes under you.
What was a sensible decision in 1927 becomes a dangerous one in 2026, and nobody made a clearly wrong choice, but the outcome is catastrophic.
Y no es solo Texas.
And it's not just Texas.
En 2024, en el sur de España, cerca de Valencia, también hubo inundaciones terribles.
In 2024, in southern Spain, near Valencia, there were also terrible floods.
Más de doscientas personas murieron.
More than two hundred people died.
Y muchos de esos edificios y carreteras también existían desde hace muchos años, construidos cuando el riesgo parecía pequeño.
And many of those buildings and roads also existed for many years, built when the risk seemed small.
Valencia.
I was following that from Austin.
The DANA storm.
And what struck me reading the coverage was how quickly the conversation became political, as if the flood were a partisan event rather than a physical one.
Sí, en España hubo muchas críticas al gobierno regional y al gobierno nacional.
Yes, in Spain there were many criticisms of the regional and national governments.
La pregunta era: ¿por qué no llegaron las alertas antes?
The question was: why didn't the warnings arrive earlier?
¿Por qué la gente no supo que el peligro era tan grande?
Why didn't people know the danger was so great?
La comunicación del riesgo es un problema serio.
Risk communication is a serious problem.
Early warning systems.
It's one of the few areas where the UN climate framework has had measurable success.
In the last decade, investment in early warning systems has gone up significantly, and the death toll from meteorological events in countries with those systems is much lower.
But the implementation is wildly uneven.
En el caso de Camp Mystic, había alertas.
In the case of Camp Mystic, there were warnings.
El problema es que las alertas llegaron muy tarde, o las personas no entendieron la urgencia.
The problem is that the warnings arrived very late, or people didn't understand the urgency.
El sistema técnico funcionó, pero la comunicación entre el sistema y las personas falló.
The technical system worked, but the communication between the system and the people failed.
And that's not unique to Texas.
It's a pattern I've seen in disaster reporting from Bangladesh to coastal Louisiana.
The technology improves, but the human chain, the last mile between the alert and the person who needs to act on it, that's where things break.
Y ahora, ¿qué pasa con Camp Mystic?
And now, what happens to Camp Mystic?
El campamento dijo que no va a abrir este verano.
The camp said it won't open this summer.
Pero, ¿van a volver algún día?
But will they ever come back?
¿Pueden construir en otro lugar?
Can they build somewhere else?
¿O es el fin de esta tradición de casi cien años?
Or is this the end of a nearly hundred-year tradition?
Honestly, I don't know.
And I think that uncertainty is itself significant.
This is what climate change looks like in practice.
Not always a dramatic transformation, sometimes just an institution quietly deciding it can't continue.
A tradition ending.
A summer that doesn't happen.
Eso es muy cierto.
That's very true.
Y es algo que la gente no comprende siempre.
And it's something people don't always understand.
Pensamos en el cambio climático como grandes desastres, como imágenes de ciudades inundadas.
We think of climate change as big disasters, as images of flooded cities.
Pero también es esto: un campamento que deja de existir, una familia que no puede volver a su casa, un río que ya no es un lugar seguro.
But it's also this: a camp that stops existing, a family that can't return to their home, a river that is no longer a safe place.
You just used a phrase, Octavio, that I want to circle back to.
You said 'deja de existir.' I've been hearing 'dejar de' a lot this episode, and I realize I don't fully understand how it works.
It's not just 'to stop,' is it?
Bueno, es interesante.
Good point, it's interesting.
'Dejar de' más infinitivo significa parar de hacer algo, sí.
'Dejar de' plus infinitive means to stop doing something, yes.
Pero tiene una idea de ruptura, de discontinuidad.
But it carries an idea of rupture, of discontinuity.
'El campamento dejó de operar' es diferente a 'el campamento paró.' 'Dejó de' implica que algo terminó para siempre, o por lo menos por mucho tiempo.
'The camp stopped operating' using 'dejó de' is different from just 'paró.' 'Dejó de' implies something ended for good, or at least for a long time.
So there's weight to it.
In English we'd reach for 'ceased' instead of 'stopped' to get that same feeling of finality.
'The camp ceased operations' hits differently than 'the camp stopped.' Same logic?
Sí, exactamente.
Yes, exactly.
Y hay otros ejemplos: 'dejó de llover,' 'dejó de hablarme,' 'dejó de creer.' Siempre hay una ruptura con el pasado.
And there are other examples: 'it stopped raining,' 'he stopped talking to me,' 'she stopped believing.' There's always a break with the past.
Y en este episodio, con Camp Mystic, la palabra es perfecta: el campamento dejó de ser lo que era.
And in this episode, with Camp Mystic, the word is perfect: the camp stopped being what it was.
The camp stopped being what it was.
That might be the sentence that stays with me from today.
Alright, that's our show.
Thank you, Octavio.
Gracias a ti, Fletcher.
Thank you, Fletcher.
Y la próxima vez, intenta decir 'dejó de' correctamente, por favor.
And next time, try to say 'dejó de' correctly, please.