Thirty-nine-year-old Jordan Macha spent more than ten summers at Camp Mystic, as both a camper and a counselor.
She can imagine in precise detail how the youngest girls, age 8, were tucked into their beds on Thursday in their cabins overlooking the Guadalupe River — hours before it swelled 26 feet in 45 minutes in a violent flash flood before dawn on July Fourth.
“I keep thinking of what those girls heard the night before: ‘Good night, Camp Mystic. We love you,’” she told The Barbed Wire. “Said in unison every night.”
The private Christian all-girls camp — nestled among cypress, live oak, and pecan trees in the Texas Hill Country on the banks of the Guadalupe — would’ve celebrated its centennial anniversary next April.
Instead, it is the scene of our latest national tragedy.
The extraordinary and shocking flood demolished businesses, homes, RV parks, and vehicles. Then it passed the South Fork of the river, where it flooded cabins filled with Camp Mystic’s youngest pajama-clad girls. As of Monday morning, at least 82 people were dead across Texas , according to local officials. Of the deceased, at least 28 were children, and that number was expected to grow.
Officials acknowledged a grim fact on Saturday afternoon — that soon, rescue efforts would turn to recovery, as the likelihood of finding survivors diminishes with each passing moment.
By morning on Monday, the worst news was confirmed.
In a statement on its website, Camp Mystic wrote that it was grieving the loss of 27 campers and counselors.
“Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy,” said the statement. “We are praying for them constantly.”
“We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support from community, first responders, and officials at every level,” the statement continued. “We ask for your continued prayers, respect and privacy for each of our families affected. May the Lord continue to wrap His presence around all of us.”
Saturday’s press conference involved government officials from all levels, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, patting themselves on the back for the work of first responders, who had to-date saved more than 850 people in rugged terrain — including badly damaged roads, felled tree limbs, and overturned vehicles — as rain continued to fall.
During the press conference, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy called Friday’s disaster a “once in a century flood,” noting how many camp staffers and counselors placed themselves in harm’s way to protect the children they were charged with safeguarding.
Late Saturday night, Abbott said he had toured the site, posting online that Camp Mystic was “horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster.”
The Texas Division of Emergency Management activated the state’s emergency response resources on Thursday, ahead of the flash flooding threats and heavy rain. But the water rose fiercely overnight, and the most urgent alerts came a little after 4 a.m. and then at 5:34 a.m., The New York Times reported. Flash floods are the second-deadliest weather hazard after extreme heat, according to CNN, and the area where Camp Mystic is located has become known locally as “Flash Flood Alley.”
In fact, Friday’s disaster was eerily reminiscent of another that struck the area nearly 40 years ago. A 29-foot flash flood hit Comfort, Texas in 1987 — just 15 miles away from Mystic. The nearby Pot O’ Gold Ranch, another Christian camp, was in the surge’s trajectory. The waters swept away a van and school bus carrying 43 teenagers who were mid-evacuation, ultimately killing 10, The New York Times reported.
Friday and Saturday, parents posted photos of their missing girls and swarmed reunification centers waiting on word of their children. In addition to the campers, more Kerr County residents and visitors were missing — including grandparents, a couple in an RV, and children on vacation — but officials didn’t have an accurate number for how many remained unaccounted for, said Dalton Rice, the city manager of Kerrville, during another Saturday press conference.
“The information is going to be changing by the minute,” Rice said.
Authorities have not yet released the names of the victims, but some of their parents and grandparents have confirmed their deaths online and in news reports.
Missing Camp Mystic camper Janie Hunt, 9, was among the dead, her mother told CNN on Saturday.
Eloise Peck, 8, was confirmed dead by her mother, Missy Peck, reported Fox 4. “She loved spaghetti but not more than she loved dogs and animals,” her mother told the news station. “She passed away with her cabinmate and best friend Lila Bonner, who also died.”
Eight-year-old Sarah Marsh, a camper from Mountain Brook, Alabama, was confirmed dead by her grandmother, Debbie Ford Marsh, in a Facebook post on Friday night, according to the Kerrville Daily Times and AL.com. “We will always feel blessed to have had this beautiful spunky ray of light in our lives,” Marsh wrote. “She will live on in our hearts forever.”
Renee Smajstrla, 8, was also killed in the flood, her uncle, Shawn Salta confirmed to The Washington Post. He posted a message on Facebook thanking “friends and family for all the prayers and outreach.” He added, “We are thankful she was with her friends and having the time of her life, as evidenced by this picture from yesterday. She will forever be living her best life at Camp Mystic. Please continue to pray for the other families in Kerrville.”
Also among the confirmed victims is camp director and co-owner Dick Eastland, who died trying to rescue his campers from the floodwaters, The New York Post reported. Dick and his wife, Tweety Eastland, have owned the riverside camp since 1974, according to Texas Public Radio. Former campers told The Barbed Wire they remembered the Eastlands as thoughtful, devoted owners who made “every girl feel truly seen and loved.”
“Losing Dick after he helped rescue the girls in Bubble Inn has shattered so many of us,” Macha told The Barbed Wire. “He and Tweety live for their campers. They built a legacy of care and courage, and they saw us as part of their family — whether we were current campers or alumni who hadn’t been back in years.”
“It doesn’t surprise me at all that his last act of kindness and sacrifice was working to save the lives of campers,” former camper Paige Sumner wrote in an essay for The Kerrville Daily Times. “He had already saved so many lives with the gift of Camp Mystic.”
‘It Was a Magical Place’
Mystic has been a popular rite of passage for many girls in Texas and across the country since its inception in 1926. There were 750 girls were at the camp this week, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said at a news conference on Friday. In an email to parents that morning, the camp said it had sustained “catastrophic level floods,” per The New York Times. Photos circulated online of little girls clinging to tree branches or riding in rescue helicopters.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” Elinor Lester, 13, a camper at Mystic, told The Associated Press, after she was evacuated with her cabinmates by helicopter. “It was really scary.”
Elinor was reportedly holding a small teddy bear and a book when she reunited with her family through sobs, her mother Elizabeth Lester told the news agency. “My kids are safe, but knowing others are still missing is just eating me alive,” she said.
Elinor’s cabin was on Senior Hill, where older girls are housed. The youngest campers, age 8, are located along the riverbanks and were the first to flood, she told reporters.
After news of the missing campers spread, former counselors, campers, and other community members shared their fear, their grief, and their memories of the beloved Texas Hill Country institution.
“Parents put their daughters on a waitlist when their daughters were born… hoping that they’d get to attend the same camp their moms did years prior,” said Sunday Crider, who worked at Camp Mystic in the summer of 1989, in a Facebook post.
As Texas Monthly reported in 1975, Mystic has also long been a favorite of the Texas political aristocracy — with Lyndon Johnson and former governors Dan Moody, Price Daniel, and John Connally all sending their daughters (and sometimes granddaughters) to the Hunt-based camp.
Mystic prides itself on giving young girls “a wholesome Christian atmosphere in which they can develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem,” according to its website.
“I left a piece of my heart in those cabins,” the former camper, Jordan Macha, wrote on Facebook. “Today, that heart is breaking.”
“I’m holding onto the love and light that Mystic gave us, even in the darkest night,” she said.
Macha told The Barbed Wire she credits Mystic for much. “The most rewarding summers” of her life; fostering joy and forging lifelong friendships; for shaping the person she is today. “Each year, I was in the same cabin group,” Macha said. “We grew up together, creating an unshakable sisterhood that extended far beyond camp. That’s part of the ‘special sauce’ of Mystic.” She remembers dance parties on their trunks before bed, whispers and giggles during rest hour, competitions full of laughter, and fierce friendship.
Macha’s heart “sank,” she said, when she caught news of the floods on Friday. Having lived through hurricanes in Houston and New Orleans, she is no stranger to flood devastation.
But this was different.
“I could picture every part of the camp and the cabins that were impacted,” she told The Barbed Wire. “I’ve been sitting with the fear those young girls and young women must have felt,” she continued, “and the bravery and courage they all showed.”
‘Holy Ground’
“Camp Mystic is sacred,” former camper Clair Cannon wrote on Facebook early Saturday morning. “It is holy ground, and you feel it the moment you pull through the gates.”
It was there that Kathryn Moore and her peers found a training ground for life, she told The Barbed Wire on Saturday.
“We learned what we were good at,” said Moore, who was a camper from 1979 to 1984. “We learned what we liked.”
In between tennis, archery, and dressage lessons, she remembers pranking her friends with bottles of white baby powder; laughing “‘till we cried;” and heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter onto Blue Bell ice cream.
“We all loved each other,” Moore said. “We learned so much about how to bring out the best parts of each one of us.”
“It was very empowering to be a girl growing up there,” she said.
Another nearby girls camp, Heart O’ the Hills, was not in session at the time of the flooding. But among the dead is Houston native Jane Ragsdale, the longtime owner and director of the camp, reported the The Kerrville Daily Times. The newspaper said Ragsdale had led the Kerr County all-girls camp since 1988.
“I can’t believe she is gone,” said 36-year-old Kat Crittenden, who was a camper at Heart O’ the Hills from 1997 to 2005, starting when she was 8 years old until she was 16. “Jane was a huge part of my life for a long time.”
Under Ragsdale’s leadership, Crittenden told The Barbed Wire that Heart O’ the Hills was “the one place that I learned true friendship, joy, independence, and so much more,” she said. “Camp is supposed to be a place of joy, children’s laughter.”
Crittenden said she believed Ragsdale passed away “saving her staff and counselors.”
“She was a pillar of the community and the heart of our camp,” said Crittenden. “She touched so many lives and I know many see her as helping raise them growing up. She taught us so many life lessons we all will keep with us forever.”
‘I Just Need to Make Sandwiches’
“Girls’ camps are emotional places,” Prudence Mackintosh wrote in Texas Monthly in 1975.
“The Spirit of Camp Mystic is love,” Inez Harrison, the camp’s director in 1975, told Mackintosh. “And that spirit pervades our whole camp. Mystic girls learn to love God first, others second, and themselves last.”
That spirit of selflessness penetrated the local response to Friday’s tragedy.
In downtown Kerrville on Saturday, Daric and Heidi Easton, who own a restaurant, told CNN they’d started making food for first responders and loading it onto helicopters that were flown to Camp Mystic.
“I think hospitality and service is uniquely equipped to handle situations like this,” Daric Easton, who has a daughter around the age of the missing girls, told the cable news station. “I can’t imagine what these parents are going through, and I don’t need to. I just need to make sandwiches.”
Fire trucks and tactical deployment units from Houston, Galveston, Cypress Creek, Montgomery County, and Walker County were among those that caravanned into the area to assist with the search and rescue efforts by the Texas Division of Emergency Management, authorities told the Houston Chronicle.
An incident commander for the Louisiana-based volunteer-run Cajun Navy told CNN that people from more than six states and at least 10 hours away have offered to aid in the search for the girls. “It really does show that this country is more united than divided and it is tremendously appreciated,” he said.
Abbott said in Saturday afternoon’s press conference that he has extended the disaster declaration he issued for more than 15 counties on Friday into Burnett, Travis, Williamson, and others. Abbott also touted the federal assistance Texas received and the more than 1,000 state responders and 15 state agencies involved in the response, calling the damage from Friday’s flood “nothing more than extraordinary devastation.” Abbott also repeated that federal, state, and local authorities “will be relentless in ensuring that we locate every single person” who has gone missing in the wake of the storm.
“We’re not going to stop today or tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll stop when the job is complete.”
Abbott said that many rescues involved saving flood victims who were “clinging to trees to save their lives” when they were found.
“This tragic situation is unprecedented,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who traveled to Kerr County for the press conference. “We recognize that at the federal level.”
‘Kids Are Screaming’
Still, survivors from Friday’s flood, like Bud Bolton, demanded answers for why area residents weren’t given more warning ahead of the weekend’s extreme rains.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said at a news conference on Friday that the storms, which began Thursday, “dumped more rain than what was forecasted.” That was confirmed by Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, who said at a press conference that the amount of rain that fell was not in the National Weather Service forecast, which on Wednesday he said was 4-8 inches in the Hill Country.
“We have floods all the time,” said Kerr County judge Rob Kelly, according to CNN. “We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever.” During Saturday’s press conference, Kelly said the devastation in the community — and number of body bags he’d seen — “breaks my heart.”
Bolton told the Houston Chronicle that he watched in horror as residents of an RV park were swept up by the force of the water. “That RV’s floating away,” he told the newspaper. “And kids are screaming, and you can’t do nothing for them?”
‘Love Is at the Heart of Mystic’
“Fifty years ago today, I was celebrating July 4th at Camp Mystic on the shores of the Guadalupe River,” wrote Susan Kent, in a post on Threads. “The news today is terrifying and heart-breaking, and I can’t wrap my head around it. Sending prayers to everyone affected by this tragedy.”
In her post, Kent included a screenshot of part of a favorite Camp Mystic song often sung during Sunday devotionals down by the river and in the dining hall at meals, which reads:
There’s a camp on the Guadalupe River.
It’s the camp of my dreams.
Where the whip-poor-wills blow softly
And the bright moon beams.
On the banks of the Guadalupe River.
Hearts are loyal and true.
Camp Mystic, I will pledge my true and faithful love to you.
“Camp Mystic taught us joy, resilience, and how to be strong, grounded humans,” Macha said. “That love is at the heart of Mystic.” Women from across camp generations have checked in, offered prayers, support, and memories, she said.
“A flood can take cabins, but it can’t take that,” Macha added.
Senior Editor Leslie Rangel contributed reporting to this story.
Editor’s note: This story previously, erroneously referred to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as U.S. Secretary of State. The Barbed Wire regrets the error.
