Senate passes 'Heaven's 27' camp-safety bill after weeks of hearings, amendments

The Texas Senate on Thursday passed the committee substitute for Senate Bill 1, the Heaven's 27 Camp Safety Act, a measure that sets new emergency-planning, evacuation and licensing requirements for youth camps and other campgrounds and attaches enforcement including loss of licensure for noncompliance.

Senator Perry, author of Senate Bill 1, told colleagues the measure responds to deficiencies exposed by the July flash floods and the deaths at Camp Mystic and other sites. "This bill answers to the deficiencies in campground safety that we've learned so much about in the last few weeks," he said on the floor.

The bill requires licensed youth camps to maintain and file active, drilled evacuation and emergency plans with local emergency management coordinators and the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). It bars new sleeping dormitories for youth camps located in a 100‑year floodplain, with two narrowly drawn licensure exceptions added on the floor for (1) cabins at least 1,000 feet from the floodway in certain low‑flash‑flood coastal areas and (2) camps located on still, dammed lakes where flash‑flood velocity is not a typical risk. Other provisions create staff training and orientation requirements, designate an emergency‑preparedness coordinator at each youth camp, require operable weather‑alert monitoring (assigned to a trained coordinator rather than placed in every cabin), mandate posting and lighting of evacuation routes and require camps to provide copies of emergency plans to parents or legal guardians (subject to who is guardian of record).

The bill also directs DSHS to maintain a database of filed camp…