{"id":250998,"date":"2026-04-15T14:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T14:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/250998\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T14:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T14:57:07","slug":"camp-mystic-official-says-she-still-hasnt-reported-flood-deaths-to-texas-agency-texas-floods-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/250998\/","title":{"rendered":"Camp Mystic official says she still hasn\u2019t reported flood deaths to Texas agency | Texas floods 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

The medical officer for Camp Mystic, the Christian summer camp in Texas<\/a> where 27 girls and counselors were killed in a catastrophic flood last year, testified this week she has still not officially reported the deaths to the state health agency reviewing the camp\u2019s application to reopen.<\/p>\n

Mary Liz Eastland, a member of the family that owns and operates the camp, appeared in court this week as part of a hearing tied to a lawsuit brought by the family of eight-year-old camper Cecilia \u201cCile\u201d Steward, whose body has not been found. The family is seeking to temporarily close off the camp\u2019s flooded areas to preserve the damage as evidence while their lawsuit proceeds.<\/p>\n

The hearing comes ahead of Camp Mystic\u2019s plans to reopen again this summer.<\/p>\n

Under Texas administrative code, camps are required to report deaths to state health regulators within 24 hours. But during her testimony, Eastland said she did not do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not think of this requirement in the moments happening after the flood,\u201d she told the court, adding she also had not done so before the camp filed its application to reopen in March.<\/p>\n

Asked whether she should do so now, with the camp license pending, she replied: \u201cI guess so.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastland told the court that she could not recall exactly when she first learned campers had died, estimating that it may have been a day or several days after the 4 July flooding.<\/p>\n

She described how water poured into her home that night and how she broke a window to escape with her children to higher ground. She said that at sunrise, she and other camp staff gathered survivors for a head count, checking names against cabin rosters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to figure out who we had and didn\u2019t have at that point,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Eastland testified that she did not try to reach the low-lying areas to evacuate campers in the early stages of the flooding because the rapidly rising flood waters made access impossible.<\/p>\n

In one exchange, an attorney for the Steward family asked her: \u201cYou knew the property. You knew the flood lines. You knew access points. Your children knew them. And these were first-year campers, you had 34 more years of experience than Cile. She needed your help, and you abandoned her, didn\u2019t you?\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Eastland responded.<\/p>\n

Eastland\u2019s testimony followed hours of questioning of her husband, Edward Eastland, a camp director whose father, Richard Eastland, was also killed in the flood.<\/p>\n

Edward Eastland told the court that he had not seen the official weather warnings before the storm, did not convene a staff meeting about the potential flooding and acknowledged that the camp did not have a detailed, written flood evacuation plan.<\/p>\n

He said that earlier action could have saved lives, but maintained that they could not have anticipated the scale of the storm.<\/p>\n

At times emotional, Edward Eastland described his efforts to save the campers on 4 July.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were girls going out of the front door. I grabbed two girls, and there was a third one I didn\u2019t grab,\u201d he said, as reported by the Washington Post,<\/a> adding that another girl \u201cjumped on my back \u2013 I don\u2019t know who it was \u2013 before we got washed out\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe water came up over my head very quickly\u201d he said. \u201cThe water was churning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to Cile?\u201d the attorney for the family said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Edward Eastland said.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The medical officer for Camp Mystic, the Christian summer camp in Texas where 27 girls and counselors were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-250998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}