A new report commissioned by Texas legislators opens with photos and stories of smiling 8- and 9-year-old girls. The girls liked to wear tutus over baseball pants, create silly dances, climb rocks and sing about Jesus.
They met a year ago at a 100-year-old nondenominational Christian camp for girls in rural Kerr County, known for creating lifelong friendships. In the Hill Country of central Texas, the girls canoed the Guadalupe River. They laughed at skits put on by their teenage counselors. And they stayed in cabins with silly names like Wiggle Inn and Giggle Box.
But when a flash flood hit Camp Mystic last July 4, the family-run camp lost 25 children, two teenage counselors and the camp’s executive director. At least 138 people in the Texas Hill Country died, making the flood the deadliest flash flood in the United States since 1976.
On June 18, the Texas Legislature released a 115-page investigative report, based on 140 interviews. The losses at the camp, it says, were avoidable.
Days later — on June 24 — Camp Mystic filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, court records show. Unlike a chapter 7 bankruptcy, which liquidates a business, a chapter 11 filing means that the business pays a portion of its debts and keeps operating.
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The Legislature’s report validates the claims made by five wrongful death lawsuits filed by families of victims. While floodwaters rose, the camp failed to protect campers.
“Camp Mystic did not timely evacuate in advance of the July 3-4, 2025 storm, despite ample opportunity to do so,” the report states.
The Eastland family, which runs the camp, cooperated with the investigation. Roys Report (RR) emailed Camp Mystic for a response to the report, but the camp didn’t immediately respond.
Texas’ safety inspector approved the camp’s safety plan, despite it being out of compliance just two days before the flood, according to the report. The area’s emergency coordinators were either asleep, off duty or out of town, the report says, with no officials watching for ominous weather warnings.
The report documents a chaotic three hours in which most of the 39 adult Camp Mystic staffers didn’t know how to evacuate the children to higher ground. This is despite the camp being in the country’s most flash-flood-prone area, nicknamed “Flash Flood Alley.”
According to the report, the long-time camp co-executive director, who perished in the flood, routinely reassured nervous parents when they dropped off their young daughters.
“Don’t worry,” Dick Eastland would tell them. “Camp Mystic is the safest place on earth.”
A history of floods
Camp Mystic, which opened in 1926, was one of the first sleep-away camps in Kerr County, Texas, 90 miles northwest of San Antonio. By 2025, the area had 19 such camps.
In 1939, the Eastland family purchased Camp Mystic and has run it ever since.
Many camps in the county were built in an area prone to flash floods, due to its hills and limestone rocks. Water can rush down hills “like concrete,” according to Cary Burgess, a meteorologist quoted in Be Flood Aware 2017, a video the legislative report cited.
“The best advice we can give is to never drive through floodwaters,” the narrator says. “Two feet of rushing water will carry away or flip over most vehicles, including SUVs.”
Camp Mystic experienced three major flash floods before 2025: 1932, 1978 and 1987, the Texas report states.
In 2011, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) placed most of Camp Mystic’s cabins and structures in a “special flood hazard area.” But in 2013, the camp appealed this decision, and FEMA removed 15 camp buildings from the designation.
The state of Texas started governing, inspecting and licensing camps for safety, starting in 1989. Camp staffers should be trained in how to evacuate campers, and campers should be informed of that plan, the Texas report states.
Camp Mystic’s emergency plan for floods, posted in cabins, said the camp will communicate with campers through loudspeakers. Campers should stay put, according to the plan, a copy of which is included in the Texas report.
“Campers and counselors NEVER wander away from their cabins,” Camp Mystic’s plan states. “All cabins are constructed on high, safe locations.”
Camp Mystic’s plan does not comply with the state’s requirements for an evacuation plan, however. Its staff does not get the required training for evacuations. But on July 2, 2025, an inspector from Department of State Health Services (DSHS) approved the camp anyway, the report states.
That same day, the Texas Division of Emergency Management issued a warning: “increased threats of flooding.”
The July 4, 2025, flood
June 29 brought 557 new arrivals for summer camp, the report states. On the afternoon of July 3, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a flash flood watch, stating a flood was possible. But that night, most of the camp’s leaders went to bed not knowing about the watch, the report states.
At 1:14 a.m. on July 4, the NWS elevated the watch to a flash flood warning. A “life threatening” flood was “expected to begin shortly,” it said. There was an additional warning: “Most flood deaths occur in vehicles.”
Dick Eastland, the camp director, stayed awake to monitor the situation. At 1:45 a.m., he radioed his son, Edward, director of the Guadalupe River portion of the camp. Eastland asked Edward for help to move boats and other equipment.
By 3 a.m., the camp road was covered by an inch of water. Some cabins were starting to flood. Eastland began evacuating cabins, using a vehicle to move the campers, cabin by cabin. He had the help of two adults but didn’t enlist others, who numbered nearly 40 adults. He also didn’t use the camp’s public announcement system to warn all campers, the report states.
“If all campers had been instructed to evacuate their cabins by foot at this time or earlier, there was ample time and opportunity for them all to safely reach higher ground,” the report states.
From 3 a.m. to 5:10 a.m., the river rose 27 feet. The occupants of some cabins found a way to higher ground. Most survived. But others stayed put, as the plan instructed, and many died. Camp leaders didn’t call 911 during the flood, the report states.
It’s likely, the report states, that the river swept away Eastland and the 13 campers and two counselors in his vehicle, the report states. What started as an evacuation mission ended in death.
Later that day, as word spread of the flood and missing girls, parents navigated the chaos and trauma of trying to locate their daughters.
“Parents of campers were unnecessarily traumatized by the delivery of incomplete and conflicting information while they waited to learn whether their loved ones had survived,” the report stated.
What went wrong and how to fix it
The legislative report said Camp Mystic failed in several ways, including:
- Its emergency plan did not comply with state requirements.
- It didn’t prepare well for the July 4 flood.
- It didn’t evacuate its campers and staff, even though it had time to do so.
- The effort to reunify families with campers was chaotic and traumatizing.
The Texas Legislature, carried along by families who advocated for change, enacted several laws in response to the tragedy:
- The Youth Camp Alert, Mitigation, Preparedness, and Emergency Response Act (Youth CAMPER Act) requires camps to have emergency plans and training for staff.
- The Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act forbids buildings in the flood plain. It also says that camps must have a public address system to alert all occupants of emergencies.
Matthew Childress lost his daughter, Chloe, 18, who was a counselor for Camp Mystic.
“Every parent in our group would give anything to have their child back,” Childress told the Texas Tribune.
Chloe was getting ready to start college with the dream of becoming a doctor. Her father told the Tribune that he hoped his daughter’s death wasn’t in vain.
“Our children deserved better,” he said. “Because of their legacy, new laws are helping ensure that camps across Texas are better prepared to protect the children entrusted to their care.”
Rebecca Hopkins is a journalist based in Colorado.
6 Responses
First of all, this camp should never have been situated in a flood plain. Secondly, all of the staff should have been made aware of safety procedures – so many young lives are in the care of those who are responsible. Thirdly, how can you say that Camp Mystic is the safest place on earth, given my previous comments?
I haven’t looked TOO deeply into it, but my understanding is that the camp has been in existence since 1921. Regarding flood planes, I don’t think they were quite thinking that way back then. I think perhaps they were overtaken by a sense of complacency because nothing bad had happened for 100 years. It’s very sad.
The trick here is that you have various flood plain definitions based on the estimated likelihood of an actual flood in x years. There is a 10 year, 100 year, and 500 year flood plain in a lot of places, and I’m pretty sure I’ve lived in a 100 year flood plain a time or two. Millions of people do–say those along the Mississippi River in Minneapolis/St. Paul, St. Louis, etc..
So the question is not whether sites are situated in a flood plain, but rather whether there is a proper evacuation procedure, along with adequate warning systems. And here, it appears that tragically, that was not in place.
I have lived and worked at a Christian camp. There is a strong ethos of “God will protect us”, and God often does. But overconfidence in that can cause people to ignore safety regulations and requirements. It seems like pure hubris to appeal regulations that deemed cabins in the unsafe path of flash floods.
it seems like more hubris to keep this camp open and operating while they’re “bankrupt”- they’ve shown a long history of unsafe decisionmaking, and shouldn’t have the chance for more families to suffer from that. I cannot imagine anyone trusting their child with this camp.
Reminds me of this old but funny story:
The Story of the Drowning Man
There’s a popular parable, often told as a humorous lesson about faith and missed opportunities, that goes like this:
A man was stuck on his rooftop during a flood. Praying for divine help, he trusted that God would save him.
Soon, a man in a rowboat came by and shouted, “Jump in, I can save you!”
The stranded man replied, “No, it’s OK. I’m praying to God, and He will save me.”
The rowboat went on its way.
Then, a motorboat came by, and the driver called out, “Jump in, I can save you!”
Again, the stranded man said, “No thanks, I’m praying to God. I have faith.”
The motorboat left.
Finally, a helicopter came by, and the pilot yelled, “Grab this rope, and I’ll lift you to safety!”
The man refused once more, saying, “I’m praying to God. I have faith He will save me.”
The helicopter left, and the water rose higher, drowning the man.
When the man got to Heaven, he asked God, “I prayed and had faith in You to save me, but You let me drown. Why?”
God replied, “I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter. What more did you expect?”
Well, a lot of it is probably driven by a feeling of “necessity”. Camps make their money during camp season. And so, you basically have two months out of the year that are responsible for a significant amount of your yearly revenue. To miss camp season is to basically to shutter the whole thing and I imagine they were holding out hope that they wouldn’t have to do that.