{"id":80158,"date":"2025-12-08T10:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/80158\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T10:36:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T10:36:11","slug":"911-calls-reveal-chaos-as-texas-floods-swept-camp-mystic-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/80158\/","title":{"rendered":"911 calls reveal chaos as Texas floods swept Camp Mystic and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of 911 calls from the devastating July 4 floods in Texas that killed scores of young girls at storied Camp Mystic have been released<\/a> \u2014 and they paint a horrifying, tragic picture of victims\u2019 final minutes.<\/p>\n

Some of the frantic calls included the sound of children screaming in the background as shaking voices pleaded for rescue.<\/p>\n

Others captured doomed rescue workers in their final moments.<\/p>\n

Storied Camp Mystic was one of numerous summertime colonies along the Guadalupe River ravaged in the July 4 flood. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Only two dispatchers were working the night of the flooding. Evan Garcia<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tree I\u2019m in is starting to lean, and it\u2019s going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?\u201d said desperate firefighter Bradly Perry in a call with dispatchers. \u201cI\u2019ve probably got maybe 5 minutes left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those 5 minutes would pass without a chopper arriving, and Perry soon became among the 137 people who died across the state.<\/p>\n

The calls were among more than 400 emergency recordings released by Kerr County and Texas officials Friday.<\/p>\n

Just two dispatchers were working in the early hours of the holiday morning when the floodwaters began to rise, and they raced to help people as quickly as they could before being forced to hang up and move on to the next caller, the audio shows.<\/p>\n

Some of the chilling calls to the dispatchers capture the chaos that unfolded<\/a> in and around Camp Mystic, a Christian girls summer retreat for the children of the state\u2019s political elite that suffered 27 deaths from the flash floods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room, and the water is rising,\u201d a frightened woman from the camp said in a call.<\/p>\n

Camp Mystic lost 25 of its campers and three staffers in the July 4 flood, which killed at least 137 across Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we get to the roof if the water is so high?\u201c she said in a later call when help still hadn\u2019t arrived. \u201cCan you already send someone here? With the boats?\u201d<\/p>\n

But the overwhelmed dispatcher couldn\u2019t help her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know,\u201d the 911 operator said.<\/p>\n

Another woman who lived downriver<\/a> from the camp was audibly shaken when she called 911 to report that she\u2019d rescued two campers who\u2019d been washed away from Mystic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic, and we had two little girls come down the river. And we\u2019ve gotten to them, but I\u2019m not sure how many others are out there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bunks at Camp Mystic reveal some of the physical devastation left behind. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Over 400 emergency recordings were released by local officials on Friday. KSATtv<\/p>\n

Twenty-five of Camp Mystic\u2019s girls would be killed in the flood, along with three staffers.<\/p>\n

Mystic \u2014 where former first lady Laura Bush was once a camp counselor \u2014 was just one of numerous camps and RV parks along the Guadalupe River that were washed away in the floods.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s water filling up super fast, we can\u2019t get out of our cabin,\u201d a counselor from another camp said in a call where children could be heard screaming in the background. \u201cWe can\u2019t get out of our cabin, so how do we get to the boats?\u201d<\/p>\n

The dangerous pace of the flooding was also made apparent by the calls.<\/p>\n

Numerous people called dispatchers several times to give updates about where they\u2019d ended up \u2014 with families moving from ground levels to second floors to attics and finally to roofs all within just 30 to 40 minutes.<\/p>\n

Dispatchers often had just moments to help callers before having to move on.<\/p>\n

In some instances tragedy, would befall callers while they were on the line, including an incident where a woman was relaying information to an elderly friend who was flooded in his home up to his head \u2014 till the man then stopped responding after his phone cut out.<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of 911 calls from the devastating July 4 floods in Texas that killed scores of young girls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9982,471,27,39103,29,28,15778,734],"class_list":{"0":"post-80158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-floods","9":"tag-natural-disasters","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-flooding-2025","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-news","14":"tag-tragedy","15":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80158","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=80158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}