KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — After floodwaters swept across the state’s south-central region overnight, at least 23 children from an all-girls summer camp were missing on Friday. Parents in Texas frantically shared pictures of their young daughters on social media along with requests for information.
Just before dawn on Friday, a storm dumped about a foot of rain, sending floodwaters rushing out of the Guadalupe River, leaving at least 24 people dead and numerous others missing, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters Friday evening. Centuries-old summer camps dot the flood-prone Hill Country, attracting thousands of children each year from all over the Lone Star State.
23 to 25 girls from Hunt, Texas’s Camp Mystic, a Christian camp beside the river, are still missing, according to state officials. They said a large search was underway and that 237 people had been rescued so far, but they declined to estimate the number of persons missing throughout the region.
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick urged the citizens of Texas to pray fervently. We are fervently hoping that we locate these little girls.
Rescuers evacuate some campers by helicopter
On Friday afternoon, Texas Game Wardens reported that they had reached Camp Mystic and were beginning the process of evacuating campers who had sought refuge on higher ground.
Elinor Lester, 13, reported that after wading through floodwaters, she and her cabinmates were evacuated by helicopter. Around 1:30 a.m., she remembered being startled awake by the sound of thunder crackling and water splashing against the cabin windows.
Lester was one of the older girls living on Senior Hill, a raised area. According to her, the cabins along the riverbanks that house the youngest campers—who can begin attending at age 8—were the first to flood.
Up the slope, campers in lower cottages sought refuge. She claimed that by dawn, they were without running water, food, or electricity. Lester claimed that when rescuers got there, they knotted a rope for the girls to grasp while they crossed a bridge while floodwaters whipped up to their knees and calves.
She claimed that the camp had been totally demolished. It was quite frightening. Everyone I directly know is safe, but there are other individuals I know who are missing, and we don’t know where they are.
According to her mother, Elizabeth Lester, her son escaped and was in the vicinity of Camp La Junta. Water was rising in the cabin when the counselor there woke up, so he opened a window and assisted the guys in swimming out. Instagram pictures from Camp La Junta and Camp Waldemar, another camp on the river, reported that all of their staff and campers were safe.
When Elizabeth Lester eventually saw her daughter, holding a book and a tiny teddy bear, she broke down in tears. She claimed that one of the missing was a friend’s daughter who worked as a counselor for the younger kids at Camp Mystic.
“My children are safe, but it’s killing me to know that there are still people missing,” she said.
Families of missing campers worry
In local Facebook groups, several of families said that safety officials had called them with heartbreaking news that their daughters were still missing amidst the fallen trees and washed-away camp cabins.
In an email to the parents of the approximately 750 children, Camp Mystic stated that their child is accounted for if they have not received a direct message.
On Friday afternoon, almost a hundred people gathered in a courtyard at a neighboring elementary school in Ingram that was being utilized as a reunification center, hoping to see their loved ones get off buses that were dropping off evacuated residents. In her white socks, a young child in a Camp Mystic T-shirt stood in a puddle, crying in her mother’s arms.
Many families wanted to see loved ones who had visited nearby mobile home parks and campgrounds.
According to Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, a charity endowment that is raising money to support NGOs assisting with the crisis, Camp Mystic is located on a strip known as “flash flood alley.”
According to Dickson, water does not seep into the ground when it rains. Down the hill it rushes.
A day before, state officials had started issuing warnings about potentially fatal weather. Ten inches of rain poured in the area, compared to the three to six inches the National Weather Service had expected.
According to Patrick, the Guadalupe River submerged its flood gauge when it surged to 26 feet in roughly 45 minutes in the early morning.
Decades before, in 1987, during destructive summer storms, a bus of teenage campers from another Christian camp along the Guadalupe River was submerged by floodwaters. After their bus failed to evacuate in time from a location close to Comfort, 33 miles (53 kilometers) east of Hunt, ten campers from Pot O Gold Christian camp perished by drowning.
Flood turns Camp Mystic into a horror story
When a fellow teacher shared an email from the camp on the missing girls, Chloe Crane, a teacher and former counselor at Camp Mystic, said it hurt her heart.
Since Mystic is such a unique location, I must admit that I sobbed because I couldn’t fathom the horror I would feel as a counselor if I were to go through that for myself and the fifteen young ladies I’m caring for, she added. Additionally, it’s just depressing—the camp seems to have been forever, and the cabins have practically been swept away.
According to Crane, the camp, founded in 1926, is a refuge for young girls who want to become more self-assured and independent. She had fond recollections of instructing her campers in journalism, crafting, and participating in a canoe race that took place throughout the entire camp at the end of each summer. “Now, their happy place has become a horror story for many counselors and campers,” she said.
Written by Jim Vertuno and Hannah Schoenbaum
