Watts’ account broadly matched the timeline that’s specified by the lawsuit. He mentioned Dick Eastland and the camp’s evening safety guard, Glenn Juenke, met within the camp’s workplace “inside minutes” after the climate service issued its alert, and had been later joined by Edward Eastland. They convened the camp’s grounds crew to safe tools, after which “began developing with a plan” about 2am, Watts mentioned.
‘I used to be shocked to see Camp Mystic start signing up campers for subsequent yr with so many questions unanswered about what occurred’.
Dan Patrick, Texas lieutenant governor
Camp Mystic introduced in September that it might reopen subsequent summer season for its one hundredth yr of operation, utilizing a close-by second campus that the camp opened in 2020. The older a part of the camp advanced, the place the flooding and deaths occurred, is not going to be open to campers in 2026.
Many of the households of campers who died within the flooding objected to the reopening. They identified that the physique of 1 camper, Cile Steward, was nonetheless unaccounted for, and so they complained that they got just a few hours’ discover earlier than the announcement.
Twin sisters Hanna (left) and Rebecca Lawrence had been among the many 25 younger victims because the flood hit Camp Mystic.Credit: AP
Texas handed a bundle of summer season camp security legal guidelines in September, a transfer championed by lots of the dad and mom of women who died at Camp Mystic, who’ve banded collectively beneath the title “Heaven’s 27”. The Texas legislature introduced in October that it might conduct a proper investigation into the July flooding within the Hill Country, which killed greater than 130 folks alongside the Guadalupe River, together with these at Camp Mystic.
“I used to be shocked to see Camp Mystic start signing up campers for subsequent yr with so many questions unanswered about what occurred that fateful morning,” Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick mentioned in a press release asserting the investigation.
The multifamily go well with filed on Monday describes the camp management as keen to chop corners and protect the phantasm of security, whereas constructing “true generational wealth” from the camp’s low overhead prices and thousands and thousands of {dollars} in annual income.
The flooded Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on July 4, 2025.Credit: New York Times
The Federal Emergency Management Agency decided in 2011 that a lot of Camp Mystic lay inside a 100-year flood zone, that means there was a 1 per cent probability in any given yr that it might be flooded. The Eastlands efficiently challenged the company’s maps, which might have designated the world of the camp as high-risk and required the homeowners to hold additional insurance coverage.
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The camp’s directions to counsellors within the occasion of a flood had been minimal, and reassured them that “all cabins are constructed on excessive, protected areas”. Instead of being educated in evacuation procedures, the lawsuit says, “counsellors flipped by way of their manuals with Edward and Mary Liz Eastland and had been instructed a flood was not going to occur”.
The go well with condemns the camp’s actions after the flooding, starting with the preliminary notices to the dad and mom within the late morning of July 4 that their daughters had been “unaccounted for”, despatched at a time when some women’ our bodies had already been discovered.
The lawsuit seeks to determine that Camp Mystic was in a area often called “Flash Flood Alley”, the place critical floods had been an everyday and predictable incidence. Flooding killed folks within the space and prompted summer-camp evacuations quite a few occasions in the course of the many years that Dick Eastland and his spouse, Tweety, lived on the camp. In 1985, Tweety Eastland needed to be flown to a hospital to offer beginning as a result of a flood had minimize off street entry.
In the early hours of July 4, Richard and Edward Eastland met within the camp’s most important workplace about half-hour after the climate service’s 1.14am warning of life-threatening flooding, and set the grounds crew to work securing tools. About 2.20am, a number of counsellors ran to the 2 males to ask for assist, reporting that water was pouring into Bug House, the cabin closest to the river. The males went to the cabin and instructed the women there to put towels down and to remain put within the cabin.
About 2.30am, the lawsuit says, campers and counsellors from some cabins started evacuating to a big two-storey recreation corridor a brief distance away, and Richard and Edward Eastland took some women there of their automobiles. But over the course of an hour, they had been capable of evacuate solely 5 of 11 cabins within the flood zone, in response to the go well with.
Some counsellors determined to evacuate their campers on their very own, with the leaders of a number of cabins pulling women by way of home windows to flee and run up a close-by hill. They might hear screams for assist from different cabins, the lawsuit says.
Tweety Eastland and Edward’s spouse, Mary Liz Eastland, who’re additionally leaders of the camp and are named as defendants within the lawsuit, had been “nowhere to be discovered” all through the flooding, the go well with says. None of the defendants assisted or gave directions to the numerous women and counsellors who made their strategy to the second flooring of the recreation corridor till later within the morning, it says.
It was about 3.51am, Watts mentioned, when Dick Eastland was swept away in his SUV, which an unnamed counsellor cited within the go well with mentioned was filled with campers from Bubble Inn, one other flooded cabin. No one within the car survived.
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The camp’s supporters have characterised Eastland as a hero who died making an attempt to save lots of kids throughout what the camp has known as a “1000-year climate occasion”.
The lawsuit calls him “grossly negligent” for loading kids right into a car in waist-deep after which neck-deep water after which trying to drive. Driving by way of floodwaters violated the recommendation of consultants, together with the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, a state company on whose board Eastland was serving on the time of his dying.
About the identical time that Dick Eastland went to Bubble Inn, Edward Eastland went to Twins, a pair of adjoining cabin buildings the place women had been instructed to remain put, regardless that they may see that different cabins close by had been being evacuated to the recreation corridor, in response to the lawsuit.
The women in Twins climbed to the highest bunks to attempt to keep above the water. Some swam out of the cabin to attempt to attain security; others had been swept out by the water. Edward Eastland was swept by way of a door to a tree together with a number of women, the place they held on till the morning. The women clinging to the tree “watched in horror as their buddies floated by, begging for assist”, the go well with says. Eleven women from Twins had been killed.
