Edward Eastland, a director at Camp Mystic, broke down during legislative testimony this week while admitting the camp's response to last summer's catastrophic flood was inadequate. "We tried our hardest that night. It wasn't enough to save your daughters," he told a joint Texas House and Senate committee panel investigating the disaster that claimed 27 lives at the all-girls Christian facility in the Hill Country.
Eastland was present during the July flooding when the Guadalupe River's banks burst during heavy rain. He and his father Richard, the camp's director, attempted a last-minute rescue as waters rose around the youngest campers and their counselors. Edward survived by being swept into a tree. Richard Eastland did not.
The apology offered little comfort to victims' families who are fighting the camp's plan to reopen in late May, using only the portions of the property that escaped the deluge. Investigators and lawmakers have concluded that camp operators squandered critical opportunities to evacuate children and operated under no legitimate evacuation strategy.
A primary failure emerged during questioning: Edward Eastland said he never considered leaving the children he was trying to rescue to return to the camp office and broadcast an evacuation order over the PA system. "Every minute was spent trying to get to the next cabin," he explained. "If we had a little more time, we could have gotten everybody out."
State regulators identified 22 deficiencies in the camp's emergency preparedness plan. The investigation revealed that the late Richard Eastland, characterized as a patriarchal leader fixated on weather monitoring, failed to implement any meaningful evacuation drills or training. Cabins posted emergency guidelines but lacked radios, tool kits, ladders, life jackets, or basic emergency equipment.
Casey Garrett, an investigator, described the lack of readiness bluntly: "There were never drills of any kind." Campers were simply instructed to shelter in place, a directive that lawmakers found nonsensical.
"How is that an evacuation plan? To stay there?" asked Republican state representative Morgan Meyer. "Please explain to me how telling someone to stay somewhere is an evacuation plan."
The timeline of that July 4 night underscores the operational breakdown. The National Weather Service issued a flood warning at 1:14 a.m. Within an hour, two counselors from riverside cabins reported flooding to the front office. Richard Eastland's response was to tell them to lay down towels. He did not authorize evacuation until nearly 3 a.m., almost two hours after the warning.
When evacuation finally began, groundskeepers were ordered to move canoes instead of assisting with moving children, a decision investigators struggled to explain. "It's pretty hard to understand why all these adults were here and lacked information," Garrett said. "They had no idea what was going on. They didn't have specific assignments, weren't told where to go."
Britt Eastland, another camp director, testified that the facility now plans to implement extensive counselor training and conduct drills for floods, fire, tornadoes, and intruders. The camp expects to serve nearly 900 campers this summer. When senator Lois Kolkhorst questioned whether the camp was truly ready to oversee 500-plus children, Britt Eastland insisted they were and predicted the broader community would be grateful for the camp's resumption.
That optimism clashed sharply with testimony from victims' families. Julie Sprunt Marshall, whose 9-year-old daughter was swept from her cabin and rescued more than a mile downstream, warned that reopening would subject trauma survivors to psychological danger. "The camp will be conducting an incredibly dangerous experiment on children," Marshall said, "testing what will happen with the first drop of rain, the first clap of thunder, at the first time a noise startles them awake."
Senator Charles Perry of Lubbock offered a blunt assessment of how the disaster unfolded: "The fate of those girls was set before any first drop of rain ever fell." A full investigative report is expected later this year.
Author James Rodriguez: "This testimony lays bare how preventable the tragedy was, which makes the camp's confidence about reopening all the more troubling for families still processing their loss."
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