The owners of an all-girls summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died in catastrophic July 4 flooding, announced plans on Tuesday for new safety upgrades that will be in place when a portion of the camp opens next summer.

Camp Mystic owners said in a letter to parents that they plan to exceed new camp safety laws that were passed by the Legislature and signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott following the devastating floods that killed at least 136 people and washed away homes and vehicles.

“We are preparing for next summer at Camp Mystic Cypress Lake and we know that safety is of the utmost concern to all of you, as it is for us,” the Eastland family wrote in the letter to parents of Camp Mystic campers. “We thank the Heaven’s 27 families and our state leaders for passing legislation to help make camps safer, and it is our goal not only to be in compliance with the new camp safety laws, but to exceed their requirements.”

The children and counselors who died have become known as “Heaven’s 27.” Camp Mystic’s owners include the wife and other family members of Dick Eastland, who also died in the flooding.

The enhanced safety measures at the camp include four flood warning river monitors designed to provide early detection of high-water events, two-way radios in every cabin enabled with national weather alerts and high-capacity generators to maintain power in critical areas of the camp, including its office and dining hall.

“We recognize that returning to Camp Mystic carries both hope and heartache,” the Eastland family said in the letter. “For many of your daughters, this return is not simple, but it is a courageous step in their healing journey.”

The Eastland family announced in September that it planned to build a memorial for the girls who died in the flooding and to reopen Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a separate property that is not adjacent to the Guadalupe River and that sustained no damage in the July 4 floods. That plan drew fierce criticism from some of the victims’ families, who said they were never consulted about Camp Mystic’s plans.

“To promote reopening less than three months after the tragedy — while one camper remains missing — is unthinkable,” CiCi and Will Steward, whose 8-year-old daughter Cile Steward died in the floods and whose body still has not been recovered, wrote to Camp Mystic officials when their reopening plan was first announced.

The families of several of the girls who died in the floods have sued Camp Mystic and the Eastlands in state court, alleging camp operators failed to take necessary steps to protect the campers as life-threatening floodwaters approached.

Camp Mystic plans to offer six separate 10-day sessions in 2026, beginning May 30 and ending Aug. 9. They also plan to offer tours of the camp in April for enrolled campers, counselors and their parents.

Texas inspectors signed off on Camp Mystic’s emergency plan just two days before the devastating flood killed more than two dozen people at the all-girls Christian summer camp, most of them children. Five children and one counselor remain missing.

Records released Tuesday show the camp met state regulations for disaster procedures, but details of the plan remain unclear. Despite warnings from the National Weather Service, Camp Mystic did not relocate its more than 650 campers and staff.

Camp Mystic disaster plans

Five years of inspection reports released to The Associated Press do not offer any details of disaster plans at the camp, raising new questions about its preparedness ahead of the torrential July 4 rainfall in flood-prone Texas Hill Country.

The Department of State Health Services released records Tuesday showing the camp complied with a host of state regulations regarding “procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster.” Among them: instructing campers what to do if they need to evacuate and assigning specific duties to each staff member and counselor.

The Texas Administrative Code lays out youth camp licensing requirements. There’s no specific requirement involving weather radios or any mention of flooding specifically, but a written disaster plan is required. The plan isn’t required to be submitted to the state, but must be posted on-site. 

National Weather Service warnings

As early as 3:30 a.m. on July 3, more than 24 hours earlier, the National Weather Service warned of potential “isolated flooding.”

That afternoon, at 2:30 p.m., more than 12 hours before the floods, it issued an official flood watch for western portions of the Hill Country, including Kerr County.

It forecast 1 to 3 inches of rain was possible, but it also warned it couldn’t rule out the chance isolated areas would see as much as 5 to 7 inches.

That danger prompted at least one of the roughly 18 camps along the Guadalupe River to move dozens of campers to higher ground.

Camp Mystic, established in 1926, did not do that and was especially hard hit when the river rose from 14 feet to 29.5 feet within 60 minutes in the early morning hours of the disaster. Flooding on that stretch of the Guadalupe starts at about 10 feet.

The first flash flood warning came at 11:42 p.m., just before midnight, for Medina, Texas, just south of Kerr County, urging people there to move immediately to higher ground.

By 1:14 a.m., flash flood warnings went out to Ingram and Hunt, as well, where several summer camps, including Camp Mystic, are located. Again, the warnings urged people to seek higher ground.  

It wasn’t until 3 a.m., nearly two hours after the warning was issued, that it hit 10 feet, what NOAA labels its “minor flooding” stage. That also marks the “action” stage, the level at which, NOAA says, when reached by a rising stream, “some type of mitigation” becomes necessary to prepare for possibly significant activity. 

From there, the river surged.

A wall of water overwhelmed people in cabins, tents and trailers along the river’s edge. Some survivors were found clinging to trees.

Growing frustration with Texas flood warnings, response

Survivors have described the floods as a “pitch black wall of death” and said they received no emergency warnings.    

Officials have come under scrutiny about why residents and youth summer camps along the river were not alerted sooner than 4 a.m. or told to evacuate.

Officials noted that the public can grow weary from too many flooding alerts or forecasts that turn out to be minor.

Kerr County Judge Rob  Kelly said authorities were shocked by the ferocity of the floods. 

“We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be any, anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever,” Kelly told “CBS Evening News.”

The potential for heavy rains had put precautions in motion as the state activated an emergency response plan and moved resources into the Central Texas area.

Camp Mystic inspection and accreditation

The state inspected Camp Mystic on July 2, the same day the Texas Division of Emergency Management activated emergency response resources ahead of the anticipated flooding.

The inspection found no deficiencies or violations at the camp in a long list of health and safety criteria. A DSHS inspector signed off on the inspection, noting “yes” to these three criteria/questions:

“Required Emergency Plans

• Is there a written plan of procedures to be implemented in case of a disaster, serious accident, epidemic, or fatality formulated and posted in the camp’s administrative on-site office or location? Yes
• Are all camp staff and volunteers made aware of the plan of emergency to be implemented during the staff training program or volunteer briefing? Yes
• Is there documentation of this training kept at the camp’s administrative on-site office or location? Yes”

The camp had 557 campers and more than 100 staffers at the time between its Guadalupe and Cypress Lake locations.

Camp Mystic did not respond to requests from the Associated Press for comment on its emergency plan.  

The camp notes that it is licensed by the state and a member of the Camping Association for Mutual Progress, which says its goal is to “raise health and safety standards” for summer camps. Leaders of that association didn’t return messages.

The American Camp Association said Tuesday that Camp Mystic is not accredited with that organization, whose standards focus on safety and risk management. Spokesperson Lauren McMillin declined to say whether the camp previously had been accredited with the association, which describes itself as “the only nationwide accrediting organization for all year-round and summer camps.”

In a statement on its website, the camp said it has been “in communication with local and state authorities who are tirelessly deploying extensive resources to search for our missing girls.”

Among the dead was Richard “Dick” Eastland, the camp’s beloved director described by campers as a father figure.    

Chloe Childress, a counselor at Camp Mystic, was killed during the devastating flooding in Hunt, Texas, over the holiday weekend, according to a representative of her high school.

She graduated from The Kinkaid School earlier this year and was set to attend the University of Texas at Austin in the fall.

Jonathan Eades, the head of The Kinkaid School, remembered Childress as someone who had a “remarkable way of making people feel seen” and “steady compassion that settled a room.”

“Whether it was sharing her own challenges to ease someone’s burden or quietly cheering a teammate or classmate through a tough day, Chloe made space for others to feel safe, valued, and brave. She understood what it meant to be part of a community, and more than that, she helped build one,” Eades wrote in a letter to the school community.

While in high school, she was the co-president of her school’s Honor Council, ran varsity cross country and founded a club devoted to helping senior citizens, according to her LinkedIn.

According to Eades, Childress “lost her life upholding this selfless and fierce commitment to others.”

“A loyal and beloved friend to all who knew her, Chloe led with empathy. Her honesty gave others the courage to speak up. Her resilience helped others push through. Her joy, so present in all the little things, reminded all who knew her to keep showing up with heart,” he said.

Catastrophic flooding over the Fourth of July weekend in Texas left at least 78 people dead and many more are missing, according to officials.

By far the greatest number of fatalities occurred in Kerr County, where 68 people are believed to be dead, according to officials, including 28 children.

There are several major camps in the area. At one of them, Camp Mystic, on the banks of the Guadalupe River, at least 11 of its 750 young female campers and counselors, including Childress, died in the flooding.

The Guadalupe River in Kerr County rose a staggering 26 feet in 45 minutes, officials said. The river reached its second-highest height on record, surpassing a 1987 flood level, according to the National Weather Service.