Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Attorney Mikal Watts points to Camp Mystic, which he is representing in wrongful death lawsuits filed against the camp by the families of young girls who died there during a flood on July 4, 2025.
Camp Mystic — the all-girls Christian summer camp in Kerr County where 25 young campers and two counselors died in the Fourth of July flooding last year — faces multiple wrongful death lawsuits as it prepares to reopen later this year.
The families see the lawsuits as an avenue toward accountability for a preventable tragedy, while the camp faces an existential threat over what its leaders argue was an unpredictable weather event.
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New details about the early morning timeline on the day of the flooding are likely to play a role in the cases.
3:56 a.m.
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The first 911 call from Camp Mystic — placed by a counselor — comes in just before 4 a.m. July 4.
The audio comes from hundreds of recordings of 911 calls, released by Kerrville officials last month in response to public records requests.
That first call was placed nearly three hours after the first flash flood warning from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. and 20 minutes after the second warning at 3:36 a.m.
According to a court filing by Camp Mystic, by this time over 150 campers and counselors had been evacuated from rapidly flooding areas.
Patricia Lim | KUT News
Law enforcement agents outside of a building at Camp Mystic on July 6, 2025.
Camp Mystic’s attorney told Houston Public Media that owner Dick Eastland was still trying to evacuate campers just before that call was placed. He was swept away, along with an unclear number of young girls in his SUV. Data recovered from the car and his Apple Watch shows he hit a tree and sank into the Guadalupe River at 3:51 a.m., five minutes before that first 911 call, according to the attorney.
Another 911 call from Camp Mystic comes at 4:08 a.m., when a non-management employee reported rising water.
4:19 a.m.
Less than 30 minutes after Eastland was swept away, a resident who lives down river from Camp Mystic calls emergency dispatchers. She reports two girls swept to her house, which she said was about a mile down the road from the camp.
5:38 a.m.
The first call from Camp Mystic management comes in at 5:38 a.m. Assistant Director Betsy Althaus tells the dispatcher that her cell service was spotty — and she does not report missing girls.
5:57 a.m.
Outside of an active call, someone in the 911 dispatch center can be heard saying, “Just an update: people are missing at Camp Mystic.”
According to text messages between local officials first reported by The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune, the first text message concerning Camp Mystic in local officials’ “COMMAND CHAT” came more than 30 minutes later, when a sheriff’s office captain said dispatch was “trying to verify” issues at Camp Mystic.
7:11 a.m.
An unnamed caller from Camp Mystic reports “about 30” girls missing.
7:22 a.m.
The first call from a member of the Eastland family, co-director Britt Eastland, comes at 7:22 a.m. He requested search and rescue, telling the dispatcher the camp was “missing as many as 20 to 40 people.”
RELATED: Houston-area residents among dead, missing in catastrophic Central Texas floods
Glenn Juenke, a former law enforcement officer working security at the camp, joined the call to say the only way to reach the location was by helicopter.
Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Camp Mystic is located along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, Texas.
Twenty minutes later, officials in the local command chat receive a message reporting missing girls at the camp.
8:45 a.m.
Britt Eastland calls back for an update just before 9 a.m. and is told local officials are “trying to get a helicopter to come in from the Coast Guard to come in and assist.”
Around this time, one of the local officials texts the command chat to report “we’re unable to reach anyone” at Camp Mystic.
Later in the morning
At 9:45 a.m., a Kerr County Sheriff’s Office official incorrectly states, “Everyone at Camp Mystic is accounted for,” but he adds, “We still would like a helicopter to make scene to confirm.”
Just after 10 a.m., he walks back the claim that everyone is accounted for. The first mention of a helicopter at the scene comes at 10:14 a.m.
RELATED: Texts among officials show confusion about missing campers during July 4 floods
The officials reestablish contact with Camp Mystic at 10:45 a.m., when they confirm 27 are missing.
AP Photo/Ashley Landis, File
An officer prays with a family as they pick up items at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, July 9, 2025.
The attorney for Camp Mystic and the Eastland family said cell service was an issue throughout the morning, preventing the camp management from reaching emergency officials sooner.
Kerr County officials did not respond to questions about the 911 calls or text messages.
The lawsuits
What exactly happened in those early morning hours — and what those actions say about how seriously camp management took the situation, as well as whether local officials bear a significant portion of the responsibility — will play a significant role in the outcome of the four lawsuits against Camp Mystic.
The plaintiffs argue the camp took too long to move the girls out of harm’s way.
Camp Mystic management acknowledges evacuations didn’t start until nearly two hours after the first flood warning from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m.
In a set of cabins with the youngest campers, girls weren’t evacuated in time to avoid the flood waters that surged just before 4 a.m.
“The ultimate decisions that led to this catastrophe and led to the loss of a lot of lives were the camp’s decisions and the camp’s only,” said Houston-based attorney Kyle Findley, who represents six of the families.
He argued the camp’s existing flood plan — which called for campers to shelter in place — was inadequate for a predictable event of this magnitude.
“There was no plan and because there was no plan, a lot of people died,” Findley said.
Mikal Watts, representing Camp Mystic and the Eastlands, argued the camp’s policies were appropriate for what they could reasonably predict — which didn’t include this flood.
“They perished because we had a thousand-year flood,” Watts said.
Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Mikal Watts, an attorney representing Camp Mystic in wrongful death lawsuits, points to the Guadalupe River in Kerr County.
He emphasized how rapidly the water started to rise around 3:30 a.m., when the National Weather Service issued a second flash flood warning.
“I’ve got people that say we haven’t seen a flood this high for 5,000 years — and, oh, by the way, 5,000 years ago there was a guy named Noah building an ark,” Watts said.
Watts has placed more weight on the lack of preparedness at the county level, including Kerr County officials’ refusal to pay for an outdoor siren system to warn of flooding.
The parties also disputed the relevance of major flooding events before last July, including a major flood that impacted the camp as far back as 1932. And they disagreed over Camp Mystic’s appeals of floodplain designations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Questions of responsibility and accountability
Joseph Sanders with the University of Houston Law Center said the question of predictability will be just as important as the details of what happened in those early morning hours.
“It was an extraordinary weather event,” Sanders said. “The question is whether you should expect serious weather events along this river, and at least there’s some evidence you should.”
When it comes to the action or inaction of local officials — which Camp Mystic’s defense has pointed to as relevant to the tragedy — Kerr County is well-shielded from these types of lawsuits, Sanders said.
“I think that they’re pretty responsible,” he said. “Unfortunately, (state law) makes it very difficult for any individual to sue the county for their negligence under that circumstance, which leaves of course all of these different entities along the river, including Camp Mystic.”
Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Matthew Childress lost his 18-year-old daughter, Chloe Childress, in the July 4 flooding in Kerr County.
For now, the parties are still battling over where the lawsuits — which include 23 of the 27 families — will be heard. All four were filed in Travis County, more than 100 miles to the east. Camp Mystic representatives are asking the court to move them to Kerr County, where the property is located.
The cases represent an existential threat to the century-old camp.
“If in fact the plaintiffs were to prevail, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw judgments in the $2 or $3 million dollars per child situation,” Sanders said, “which my guess is totally exhausts the assets of this defendant.”
That estimate runs up to $69 million.
For Houston resident Matthew Childress — whose daughter Chloe was a counselor and among the victims — the case is primarily about accountability.
“It’s really about again uncovering the true timeline, the true actions that were taken, so that there can be full transparency, so we can all learn from what happened, and ultimately potentially accountability for that,” Childress said.
Regardless of the outcome, he said, the 27 families will never recover from the loss of their girls.