Howdy friends, it’s The Barbed Wire senior editor Brian Gaar. I wish I could say this edition of the newsletter was lighthearted. But sometimes events hit you right in the chest — and this week, they broke our hearts.
On July 4, as most of us were bracing for barbecue and fireworks, a flash flood tore through the Hill Country and took 27 campers and staff members from Camp Mystic — a summer camp nestled along the Guadalupe River. Five more campers and a 19-year-old counselor have not yet been recovered. In all, at least 119 people have died in the Hill Country, with still more missing.
What was supposed to be a night of sparklers turned into a tragedy so brutal, it’s hard to put into words — but we’re going to try.
Here are the stories we’re sitting with this week:
Camp Mystic alum Katherine Howe recalls surviving a near-identical flood in 1987 — in the same cabins now lost to tragedy.
James Avery, longtime jeweler to Camp Mystic girls, is pledging $1 million to flood relief and donating all proceeds from a now-iconic charm.
As families grieve 27 lives lost, the Camp Mystic community honors its girls, its counselors, and a century-old tradition shattered overnight.
‘Each Charm Tells Stories’: James Avery, Camp Mystic’s Longtime Jeweler, Pledges $1M in Flood Relief
By Riya Misra
‘Goodnight, Camp Mystic. We Love You.’: A 100-Year-Old Community Honors Its 27 Dead Girls
By Riya Misra and Olivia Messer
‘It’s a Waking Nightmare’: Camp Mystic Alum Recalls Flood That Hit the Same Cabins in 1987
Nearly 40 years ago, Katherine Howe was evacuated from Bubble Inn — one of the same cabins washed away by the swollen Guadalupe River on July 4, killing 27 girls from Camp Mystic.
By Leslie Rangel and Olivia Messer
Forty-eight-year-old Katherine Howe let memories of the summer of ‘87 rush back to her on Friday.
As the world woke up to the news of missing girls who’d been swept away from their summer camp cabins in violent flood waters on July 4, Howe was transported back to when she was 10 years old and staying in one of the same cabins at Camp Mystic, called Bubble Inn.
“It’s a waking nightmare,” Howe told The Barbed Wire.
The private Christian all-girls camp was founded in 1926 in the Texas Hill Country on the banks of the Guadalupe River. Nearly 100 years later, the camp announced that it was grieving the deaths of 27 campers and counselors.
Before dawn on Friday, the river swelled 26 feet in 45 minutes. It demolished businesses and homes, carried off RVs full of families, and overturned vehicles before smashing them into trees. Then the rushing water passed the South Fork of the river, where it washed away two cabins filled with the youngest Camp Mystic girls, age 8, with their pajamas and stuffed animals.
For Howe, the details of the destruction were devastating. And eerily familiar.
Nearly 40 years ago, as Howe slept in Bubble Inn on July 17, a 29-foot flash flood hit Comfort, Texas — just 15 miles away.
The storms produced a “train-effect, one following another” and dumped 5-10 inches of rain in the upper headwaters of the Guadalupe River basin, the National Weather Service said at the time.
The nearby Pot O’ Gold Ranch, another Christian camp, was in the surge’s trajectory. The river at Comfort crested at 31.50 feet, the ninth highest crest in recorded history, according to the NWS. Hundreds of people along the river and its tributaries had to be evacuated. During the evacuation, the waters swept away a van and school bus carrying 43 teenagers, ultimately killing 10, The New York Times reported at the time.
Howe still remembers it.
“I was on the top bunk,” she told The Barbed Wire, “and I remember being … able to actually glimpse the river through the trees from our cabin.” That visibility, she said, meant that the water had risen to dangerous levels. Howe and her cabinmates were evacuated and spent the night in the recreation hall, which was on higher ground.
“We all stayed at camp,” she said. “Then when the waters receded, I distinctly remember being shocked that everything at the waterfront was completely gone, like all the canoes were gone, all the structures around the waterfront were gone. The diving board was gone. Everything was completely gone. And one of my friends who I was chatting with recently said that she remembered looking up into a tree and seeing a canoe wedged in a tree 30 feet up in the air.”
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