Families accuse Camp Mystic of ignoring risks in Texas lawsuit over flood deaths

The administrators of Camp Spiritualist in Texas, where 25 young ladies and two adolescent counselors kicked the bucket in disastrous flooding on July 4, fizzled to take vital steps to secure the campers as life-threatening floodwaters drawn nearer, families of the casualties affirm in a lawsuit.

The claim, recorded Monday in state court in Austin, looks for more than $1 million in harms but does not indicate an correct sum. It was recorded as Camp Spiritualist has drawn recharged shock from a few victims’ families over plans to revive the 100-year-old camp following summer. Among the claims in the claim is that a groundskeeper was coordinated to spend more than an hour clearing gear whereas young ladies and counselors in cabins closest to the Guadalupe Waterway were requested to stay there, indeed as floodwaters overpowered the property.

The claim was recorded by the families of five campers and the two counselors who died.

“These youthful young ladies passed on since a for-profit camp put benefit over security,” the claim said. “The camp chose to house youthful young ladies in cabins sitting in flood-prone regions, in spite of the hazard, to dodge the fetched of moving the cabins.”

The suit too affirms the administrators of the camp chose not to make plans to securely empty campers, in spite of state rules requiring such plans, and instep requested campers and counselors to stay in their cabins as a matter of arrangement. Litigants named in the claim incorporate Camp Spiritualist, subsidiary substances and its proprietors, counting the domain of camp proprietor Richard Eastland, who moreover passed on in the flooding, and his family members.

A partitioned claim with comparable charges was recorded Monday by the family of Eloise Peck, another Camp Spiritualist camper who kicked the bucket in the surge. Both claims were recorded in Travis County.

Telephone and mail messages cleared out Monday with an lawyer for Camp Spiritualist looking for comment on the claim were not promptly returned.

The campers and counselors were murdered when the fast-rising floodwaters thundered through a low-lying range of the summer camp some time recently day break on the Fourth of July. All told, the damaging flooding slaughtered at slightest 136 individuals, raising questions approximately how things went so appallingly wrong.

County pioneers were snoozing or out of town. The head of Camp Spiritualist had been following the climate in advance, but it’s presently vague whether he saw an critical caution from the National Climate Benefit that had activated an crisis caution to phones in the zone, a representative for the camp’s administrators said in the prompt consequence. The camp, built up in 1926, did not empty and was hit difficult when the waterway rose from 14 feet (4.2 meters) to 29.5 feet (9 meters) inside 60 minutes. Ryan DeWitt, whose girl Molly DeWitt was one of the campers murdered in the flooding, said in a articulation that the claim is a step toward making a difference the family discover peace.

“We believe that through this prepare, light will be shed on what happened, and our trust is that equity will clear the way for anticipation and much-needed security change,” DeWitt said.

The passings of the campers and counselors, and the gut-wrenching declaration from their guardians to Texas legislators, driven to a arrangement of unused laws outlined to avoid comparative tragedies in the future.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2025/11/10/g-s1-97313/camp-mystic-2025-texas-floods-lawsuit

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