Brooklyn and Bailey MckNight's little sister, Paisley, was at a camp on a smaller arm of the Guadalupe River. The 14-year-old was "just miles" away from Camp Mystic in Central Texas, which has been devastated by the deadly floodwaters spurred by extreme rainfall on July 4.

When tragedies are in the news — natural disasters, plane crashes, fires — parents naturally and unavoidably react by thinking about what might happen to their own children. And children worry in turn about what might happen to them.

Two days before flash floods on the Guadalupe River in Texas killed dozens of campers at a Christian girls summer camp, a state inspector approved operations, noting there was a written plan for responding to natural disasters.