Now-heartbreaking pictures have emerged showing young campers at Camp Mystic just days before the fatal Texas floods ravaged the area.
One photo taken at the camp shows thirteen young girls and two counselors posing for a cabin photo in crisp white dresses and sneakers, smiling at the start of what was meant to be a week of summer memories.
Less than five days later, every girl and counselor in that photograph was swept away as flash floods tore through the Texas Hill Country, turning the camp’s riverside grounds into a disaster zone with no time to escape.
Most of the girls, ages 8 and 9, were among Camp Mystic’s youngest campers, staying in the “Bubble Inn” cabin just a few hundred feet from the riverbank. The floodwaters rose 20 feet in minutes after a sudden downpour, leaving the cabin directly in the path of the surge.
Tragically, ten of the girls have been found dead, along with 18-year-old counselor Chloe Childress. Three girls and 19-year-old counselor Katherine Ferruzzo remain missing in the flood’s aftermath.
Tragedy struck around 4:00AM on Friday as the girls – just a few hundred feet from the Guadalupe River – were sleeping, per the New York Post.
The third and fourth graders, as the youngest campers, were housed in the low-lying flatlands — closest to the river, with cabins just 225 feet from the bank — while older girls stayed on safer ground at “Senior Hill.”
It became a tragic division that sealed the fates of the youngest campers when the river turned into a deadly current with nowhere to run.
Camp Mystic, a storied Christian sleepaway camp beloved by Texas’s most elite families in Houston, Dallas, and Austin, now counts 27 dead, with 10 young girls plus counselor Katherine Ferruzzo still missing in what has become one of the deadliest weather disasters in Texas history.
Photos from inside the nearby Handy Hut cabin show floodwaters nearly reaching the top of the door frame before receding, a haunting snapshot of how quickly the water overwhelmed everything in its path.
Across Kerr County, the flash flooding claimed more than 100 lives over the weekend, with the statewide death toll reaching 95.
Among the dead at Camp Mystic is the camp’s beloved owner, Richard “Dick” Eastland, who died while trying to save the girls in the Bubble Inn cabin, according to his son.
The Washington Post reported that the waters from the Guadalupe and a nearby creek “rushed in from both sides, leaving no escape for anyone.” Eastland’s body was found along with the remains of three young girls inside a black SUV.
“It made like a swirl right around those cabins like a toilet bowl,” camp employee Craig Althaus told the Washington Post, describing how the river turned deadly as it swallowed the flatlands cabins.
Counselor Chloe Childress also died while trying to save the girls she loved and cared for so deeply.
“She upheld a ‘selfless and fierce commitment to others,’” Jonathan Eades, head of school at Kinkaid School in Houston where Chloe had just graduated, shared in a statement.
The tragedy in the Bubble Inn cabin:
Found dead –
- Margaret Bellows, 8
- Lila Bonner, 9
- Janie Hunt, 9
- Lainey Landry
- Sarah Marsh, 8
- Linnie McCown, 8
- Wynne Naylor, 8
- Eloise Peck, 9
- Renee Smajstria, 9
- Mary Stevens, 8
- Chloe Childress, 18
Still missing –
- Molly DeWitt, 9
- Ellen Getten, 8
- Abby Pohl
- Katherine Ferruzzo, 19
Our thoughts continue to go out to every person and family affected by this tragedy.