When floodwaters rushed through a girl’s summer camp nestled in the Texas Hill Country, Michael McCown’s 8-year-old daughter was among 27 campers and counselors swept to their deaths.
On Wednesday, McCown joined other Camp Mystic parents, some wearing buttons memorializing “Heaven’s 27,” in demanding that Texas lawmakers pass a bill that would boost camp safety, including generally keeping cabins out of flood plains, instituting new requirements for emergency plans and mandating weather radios.
“It will hurt my family forever that, for reasons I still do not know, these protections were not in place nor thought out thoroughly for my daughter and the rest of the girls here,” he said. “Please pass this bill, protect our kids and do not let their deaths be in vain.”
McCown’s middle child, Linnie, was sandwiched between two brothers. She was sometimes a pest to her 11-year-old brother. But to the youngest, just 3, she was mother figure, making him cereal on weekends so her parents could catch a few minutes of sleep.
“To everyone else she was a joy,” her father told lawmakers. “She hugged her teachers, was a friend to everybody and spread an infectious giggle everywhere she went.”
