AUSTIN, TX — Young and inexperienced Camp Mystic counselors are not trained to help campers during floods or other emergencies and are afraid to make decisions on their own, an investigator into the 2025 flood that killed 27 counselors and campers told Texas lawmakers on Monday.
Lawmakers heard an emotional, comprehensive review of the camp’s “obedience” culture that brought together poorly trained teen counselors and the youngest campers; He was satisfied with the flood warnings; He had bad connections. Evacuation efforts are seriously delayed.
“There was absolutely no real training, no drills of any kind” for counselors or campers about what to do or where to go in the event of a flood threat, said Casey Garrett, a special legislative committee investigator. She was speaking at the committee’s first session about the Fourth of July flood that swept through the girls’ Christian camp on the banks of the Guadalupe River.
Twenty-five campers and two teenage counselors were killed. Camp owner Richard Eastland was also killed while trying desperately to evacuate the girls to higher ground.
Garrett noted that most of the victims were under the age of 10 and some were attending the camp for the first time.
Many of the horrific details have already been made public through legal hearings, media reports and interviews, but the state report presents them in a stark and simplistic review.
The lack of emergency planning is of great importance as the camp seeks to reopen in late May. The owners of Camp Mystic said they plan to reopen the portion of the camp that was not flooded and expect to have approximately 900 girls on campus this summer.
The reopening plans have angered families of the victims, and some prominent state officials have called on state regulators to deny or delay renewing the camps’ license, which is currently under review.
Dozens of victims’ family members filled the committee room on Monday. Some cried or left when pictures of the victims and the destroyed camp site were shown, or when they heard the names of their loved ones read aloud.
The report cited some harrowing survivor accounts.
Garrett described one girl recounting how floodwaters in her cabin rose so high that her chin touched the ceiling before she was able to escape. One counselor told investigators that she had to push the girls under water to get them through the door of the flooded cabin.
The committee watched a video of water flowing into one of the buildings through cracks in the entrance. In a video captured on a mobile phone, a girl can be heard screaming “help” in the dark amid raging floodwaters.
They also heard a short interview with a counselor who arrived at a two-story recreation hall housing about 100 campers. She described the horror of the ordeal that night as terrified campers watched the rising floodwaters approaching them.
Garrett, a Houston attorney who helped report to the Legislature on the 2022 Uvalde school shooting, pointed several times to the lack of emergency training for teen counselors and child campers.
The main problem was the lack of a detailed evacuation plan. The only instructions to the girls in the low-lying areas of the camp was a one-paragraph directive asking them to “remain in their cabins unless otherwise requested by the office. All cabins are built in elevated, secure locations.” This plan passed a government inspection two days before the flood.
Eventually, some counselors took matters into their own hands and began pushing the girls out the cabin windows to climb up the hill.
“It wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t a safe plan. It was a choice that was made, thank God,” Garrett said. “It was very personalized.”
Some counselors told investigators they were too afraid to take children to higher ground or out into the storm before they received explicit instructions to do so for fear of getting into trouble.
Garrett described the camp’s culture as “promoting obedience” and dominated by Eastland, the campus patriarch. Some Eastland family members and camp staff referred to him as “The General” and “The Eagle.”
“He ruled,” his wife, Tweety, told investigators. Several members of Eastland’s family attended the hearing.
“He was running the show there…but you never really got over him,” Garrett said.
The camp relied almost exclusively on it for what to do in flood emergencies. The owner’s son, Edward Eastland, testified in a lawsuit last week that any detailed flood evacuation plan was in his father’s mind.
Richard Eastland was found dead in his car along with several girls he tried to drive to safety. Floodwaters swept Edward Eastland into a tree. Camp security officer Glen Goeneke also survived when he was trapped in a flooded cabin with campers.
Garrett described Richard Eastland as a popular camp leader who taught generations of girls how to fish. He had a knack for calming down young campers who were nervous about their first time away from home.
“We know that Dick Eastland loved every little girl that came to Camp Mystic,” Garrett said.
The Texas Legislature will not meet again until January 2027 and the commission does not control the camp license that is under review. Several lawmakers said they want to use the report to craft new rules for all camps.
The camp’s proposed future safety plan has already been flagged for nearly two dozen deficiencies by state regulators, including parts of flood warning monitoring and evacuations.
Last year, Texas lawmakers passed new measures to require more detailed planning, training, and installation of emergency warning systems.
“Texans’ grief continues,” said State Senator Pete Flores. “We can’t change what happened, but we can change how we prepare for and respond to the next emergency.”