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A Camp Mystic sign is seen near the entrance to the establishment along the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas, July 5, 2025, after a flash flood swept through the area. (AP Photo\/Julio Cortez, File) <\/p>\nA Camp Mystic sign is seen near the entrance to the establishment along the banks of the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas, July 5, 2025, after a flash flood swept through the area. (AP Photo\/Julio Cortez, File) <\/p>\n
DALLAS \u2014 Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization on Wednesday, nearly a year after catastrophic floods killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors at the Christian camp for girls along the Guadalupe River in Texas.<\/p>\n
Camp Mystic has been under increasing pressure since the July 4 disaster. Owners had planned to reopen the Texas Hill Country camp this summer for its 100th anniversary but reversed course in April amid outrage from victims\u2019 families and lawmakers. Victims\u2019 families filed lawsuits accusing the camp of failing to protect the girls as the powerful floodwaters approached.<\/p>\n
Camp Mystic\u2019s owner, Richard Eastland, also died in the flood.<\/p>\n
The camp listed its debt at more than $10 million, according to the filing made in federal bankruptcy court in Houston. An attorney for Camp Mystic has not responded to an email and a phone message seeking comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cBankruptcy will not stop all responsible parties from being held accountable,\u201d Paul Yetter, a lawyer who represents multiple families of campers and counselors who died at Camp Mystic, said in a statement. \u201cThese innocent girls deserve justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
For decades, Camp Mystic was a summer staple and an institution for generations of families, who dropped off their girls at the sleepaway camp to ride horses, canoe, fish and attend Bible studies. Other summer camps in Kerr County, west of Austin, did not take on such devastating flooding and in some cases have reopened.<\/p>\n
All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the river, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the Eastland family spent months determined to reopen the camp this summer, pointing to enhanced safety measures that included flood warning river monitors and putting two-way radios enabled with national weather alerts in every cabin.<\/p>\n
By the spring, Camp Mystic\u2019s attorney said it was ready to reopen for business for nearly 900 campers.<\/p>\n
But assurances of safety did not convince victims\u2019 families and some Texas lawmakers. State regulators found nearly two dozen deficiencies in the emergency operations plan submitted by the owners, including in proposals for flood warning evacuations and safety training.<\/p>\n
The decision not to reopen followed weeks of testimony in court hearings and legislative investigations that laid bare the camp\u2019s lack of detailed planning for a flood emergency and its reliance on poorly trained staff.<\/p>\n
Families of the victims packed the hearings, some wearing \u201cHeaven\u2019s 27\u201d pins with photographs of their daughters. They listened to the details of missed flood warning signs, the descriptions of the flood and the decision to leave the girls in their cabins until it was too late. Testimony included video of the raging floodwaters as a girl repeatedly screamed \u201chelp!\u201d somewhere in the distance.<\/p>\n
Before halting the reopening plans, Camp Mystic invited journalists and lawmakers to review safety improvements at the camp and promised that no camp activities would take place in the low-lying area that was devastated by the flood. The Eastland family also stressed that hundreds of families wanted to return.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
McCormack contributed to this report from Concord, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Camp Mystic sign is seen near the entrance to the establishment along the banks of the Guadalupe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-348818","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\/348818","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=348818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}