{"id":21626,"date":"2026-04-28T09:51:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/21626\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T09:51:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:51:38","slug":"camp-mystic-counselors-lacked-training-texas-lawmakers-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/21626\/","title":{"rendered":"Camp Mystic counselors lacked training, Texas lawmakers told"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asked by the Texas Legislature to investigate last summer\u2019s deadly flood at Camp Mystic, Casey Garrett recounted the harrowing early-morning hours as the Guadalupe River surged through cabins and reached deadly heights.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers at the Capitol hearing sat attentive Monday as Garrett methodically offered one of the most detailed accounts to date of the horrors of July 4 at the camp. Family members of campers and counselors who died, wearing now-familiar buttons showing their faces, passed tissues in the audience. Members of the Eastland family that ran the camp also looked on.<\/p>\n

In some Camp Mystic cabins, Garrett told a joint hearing of House and Senate flood investigative committees, counselors rushed girls to the recreation hall, which had a second-floor balcony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other cabins, counselors passed girls through windows, piggy-backing the kids through the water to the safety of a nearby hill as lightning cut through the darkness and rain fell in sheets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In still another cabin, a night security guard and a counselor pushed heavy trunks of girls\u2019 belongings out a window even as they tried to keep girls from getting swept away. The water\u2019s path kept changing. Flashing vehicle hazard lights lit the space that, unlike other cabins filling with water, had a vaulted ceiling, giving campers room to breathe.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s madness,\u201d Garrett told legislators. \u201cIt\u2019s mayhem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camp Mystic hadn\u2019t prepared counselors and staff with adequate emergency training, an evacuation plan or emergency preparedness supplies such as life jackets or ladders, Garrett said. Counselors performed \u201cheroic actions,\u201d she said \u2014 but did not execute a safe evacuation plan because there was none.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, Garrett concluded, neither grown adults nor college-age counselors had the preparation or organization to take advantage of the time they had to get girls out of cabins safely after the National Weather Service pushed out the first flood warning<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"WordsWords from Dick Eastland shown on screen at during Monday\u2019s committee hearing. Eastland, then Camp Mystic\u2019s executive director, died in the flood, along with 27 campers and counselors. Manoo Sirivelu\/The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

The investigator offered some new details on what happened that morning, on top of extensive testimony that\u2019s already been shared in an Austin courtroom and lawsuits, and Garrett\u2019s even-handed, concise presentation packed a punch as she reviewed beat-by-beat the flood that killed 25 campers, two counselors and the camp\u2019s executive director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the harried evacuation, campers got temporarily separated on the hillside from counselors, Garrett said. At least one lost hold of a counselor\u2019s hand and got swept away. One girl circled back for her sheet and was taken by the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw her,\u201d said Garrett, quoting a camper. \u201cAnd then I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fate of those girls was set before any first drop of rain ever fell,\u201d said Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no system\u201d<\/p>\n

The night of July 3 felt normal at Camp Mystic, Garrett said, describing a rustic site with a culture rooted in obedience and in legacy. There, Garrett said, girls learned to follow rules. Women from the same families attended generation after generation. Moms put daughters on a waiting list at birth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dick Eastland reigned as commander of the camp, Garrett explained \u2014 a man people knew not to cross, a man who ran the show. Counselors explained that they felt they would get in trouble with Eastland if they took girls into the lightning or ran to the camp office in the pouring rain, Garrett said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Counselors on July 3 performed skits. With a flood watch in place, camp staff could have moved the campers to a safer portion of the property for a slumber party, Garrett proposed. But they didn\u2019t. Taps played on the loudspeakers.<\/p>\n

Eastland \u2014 who Garrett said well knew the threat that flash floods could bring \u2014 monitored the weather.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hours proceeded. About 30 minutes after the weather service warned of life-threatening flash flooding, Eastland radioed a son about the heavy rainfall \u2014 2 inches in an hour \u2014 saying they needed to move equipment from the waterfront, a common first step if it was flooding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Counselors in their pajamas ran in the dark and in the rain to ask for help because water had begun pouring into some cabins.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow things are starting to ramp up a little bit,\u201d Garrett recounted.<\/p>\n

Eastland acted as if he were waiting for the right moment to push a big red emergency button but waited too long, in Garrett\u2019s opinion.(Legislators in a special session passed measures<\/a> last year after the flood to implement new safety rules for youth camps \u2014 including taking action to evacuate flood-prone camps as soon as a flash flood warning is issued.)<\/p>\n

\"AA man stares at damage caused by the Fourth of July flood in Ingram on July 5, 2025. Brenda Baz\u00e1n for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

Not until 3 a.m did Eastland radio to evacuate a cabin the counselors had told him about. But he and his son, Edward, didn\u2019t round up all available adults on that side of camp \u2014 which included groundskeepers, nurses and another of Eastland\u2019s sons who appeared not to know what was happening, Garrett noted. The investigator and her team found no evidence of staff trying to use the same speaker system that had played Taps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Three adults instead worked piecemeal, moving girls out of a few cabins at a time. In doing so, they missed a critical opportunity to direct girls to walk a short distance to safety. Some buildings had second stories, including the recreation hall, which ended up filled with 95 campers who had to go to the bathroom out the window, and water rising so high counselors started brainstorming what to do if they had to get out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no system,\u201d Garrett emphasized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some of the camp\u2019s youngest and neediest campers remained in their cabins, supervised by first-time counselors. Importantly, many cabins only had two counselors instead of the historically typical three, Garrett said.<\/p>\n

Eastland radioed directions to evacuate those youngest girls from three cabins, including Bubble Inn, according to Garrett\u2019s timeline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis loss of life was preventable\u201d<\/p>\n

Garrett displayed photos of the Bubble Inn campers. Each died in the Guadalupe River, she said, but what exactly happened remains a mystery. No one survived to be interviewed among the more than 140 people Garrett spoke with in recent months to prepare her testimony.<\/p>\n

At least some of the girls wound up in Dick Eastland\u2019s vehicle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI have Bubble Inn cabin in my car,\u201d Eastland radioed. \u201cI\u2019m stuck against a tree. I need help.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edward, his son, replied: \u201cDad, I\u2019m sorry. I can\u2019t get to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastland\u2019s body was later found in his vehicle, along with the bodies of some of the girls.<\/p>\n

Edward Eastland, meanwhile, couldn\u2019t get the door to another cabin open and was desperately trying to find a way in from an attached cabin, giving directions to a trapped counselor through a vent. At some point, the outer door opened and the counselor started passing girls outside, ducking their heads under water to get them out.<\/p>\n

One of the girls was found 6.5 miles down river \u2014 covered in ant bites but alive. Neighbors found two more surviving girls in a debris pile a mile away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And still more girls from those cabins lived by clinging to a tree \u2014 which would collapse later that day as the last of them was rescued from it, Garrett said. Another survived by gripping a limestone column on a cabin, holding with her arms and legs like a monkey and even her chin, which she dug into the stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tragedy could have been prevented,\u201d Sen. Pete Flores, a Republican from Pleasanton and chair of the Senate investigating committee, said in his opening remarks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garrett said the scope of her investigation was limited to events at Camp Mystic, though the flood killed more than 100 people when heavy rains caused the Guadalupe River to surge through homes, RV parks and youth camps in the middle of the night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She urged lawmakers to take action and not let her work languish in a report.<\/p>\n

Camp Mystic is planning to welcome campers back this summer to a portion of its property\u00a0that is separate from where the girls died. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, though, has repeatedly called on<\/a> the state to deny the camp\u2019s operating license. He reiterated that call in a social media post after the hearing on Monday, pointing to the testimony as evidence justifying withholding the camp\u2019s license.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one wants to close Camp Mystic forever,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cOnce you see and hear the evidence, I think you will clearly understand why I, along with the Heaven\u2019s 27 families who lost their children, have called on DSHS to not renew Camp Mystic\u2019s operators\u2019 license until all investigations are complete later this year and Camp Mystic and its operators are determined to be fit to protect and care for children in their custody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The camp also faces multiple lawsuits from families and is being investigated by the state agency that licenses them and the Texas Rangers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis loss of life was preventable, and it is, it\u2019s, I don\u2019t know how to process that,\u201d said Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moody went on: \u201cI can\u2019t even imagine how these families wake up every day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to understand,\u201d Garrett said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked by the Texas Legislature to investigate last summer\u2019s deadly flood at Camp Mystic, Casey Garrett recounted the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6174,8,10513,9,433,7,293],"class_list":{"0":"post-21626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-flood","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-kerr-county","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-texas-legislature","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-well-a-homepage"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116481719223973414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}