By Sean Murphy
Associated Press
Patrick Hotze’s three daughters made it home safe from Camp Mystic after July’s catastrophic floods that killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors. He attended some of the funerals and says he understands the outrage over the Texas camp’s plan to partially reopen next year.
He also intends to send his girls back.
“My heart is broken for them,” Hotze said of the parents whose girls died, including some he described as close friends. “I think it’s different for each kid and each family.”
For the first time since the roaring flood, the 100-year-old all-girls Christian sleepaway retreat plans to sign up campers in January, forging ahead with a reopening that has divided families and stunned some lawmakers. Campers will start arriving in May, bunking on higher ground than the area where fast-rising waters on the Guadalupe River swept away two cabins.
Some families say the decision to let their daughters return is a vital step in their own healing from the disaster that is still under scrutiny. The floodwaters that worsened with terrifying quickness during the July Fourth holiday weekend killed at least 117 people in Kerr County alone. Two victims have still not been found, including an 8-year-old Camp Mystic camper.
Promises of extra safety and preventive measures
Next year, Texas legislators are set to hold investigative hearings into the tragedy but have shown little appetite to assign blame. Local leaders in Kerr County, including two who were asleep when the waters started rising, remain in their jobs after defending their preparations and evacuation efforts. They are now steering a slow recovery while trying to expedite a new flood warning system before campers return.
“We recognize that returning to Camp Mystic carries both hope and heartache,” Camp Mystic’s owners wrote in a letter to families this month. “For many of your daughters, this return is not simple, but it is a courageous step in their healing journey.”
It is unclear how many girls will return to Camp Mystic when the camp begins enrollment next month, but a spokesperson said there is “strong interest.” The camp’s owner, Dick Eastland, died in the flood and his family has vowed to enhance safety measures before reopening, including two-way radios in every cabin and new flood warning river monitors.
The devastating July floods were hardly the first to strike the area known as “Flash Flood Alley,” where the limestone hills quickly gather water and funnel it into narrow river banks. This year was at least the fifth time in a century that flooding near the Guadalupe River has turned deadly. An attorney for Camp Mystic, Mikal Watts, said he and camp officials have contacted several former campers who witnessed previous floods and who told them they were nowhere near as high or as powerful as the flooding this year.
Outrage and acceptance
Those assurances have not quieted some parents of the 27 victims, who say the decision to reopen is insensitive and that the Eastland family has refused to take responsibility for its failures.
Lawsuits filed by some of the families allege camp operators failed to protect the children and even ordered girls and counselors in the cabins closest to the river to stay inside as floodwaters overwhelmed the property. Hundreds of 911 calls released by authorities this month included a woman who lived a mile downriver and said two of the campers had swept by.
“As parents of children who were killed at Camp Mystic last summer, we are deeply hurt but, sadly, not shocked by yet another insensitive announcement from Camp Mystic focused on enrollment,” the parents of six girls who died said in a public statement this month.
Some parents say Camp Mystic has played an instrumental role in their children’s personal and spiritual development, and that eased their decision to allow their girls to return.
Liberty Lindley’s 9-year-old daughter, Evie, was among those caught in the flooding. She was trapped with her campmates in a cabin dubbed Wiggle Inn, adjacent to the low-lying cabins that were quickly inundated by the flooded river.
Many of the girls Evie knew were swept to their deaths.
Yet despite the horror Evie endured, floating on mattresses with her friends in the pitch dark before being evacuated by helicopter, Lindley said her daughter didn’t hesitate when asked if she wanted to return to Camp Mystic.
“I know some people don’t understand that or think that’s crazy,” she said of her decision to allow her daughter to go back.
She recalled talking with Evie — whose twin sister died of leukemia in 2024 — while washing her hair in the bathtub, right after her terrifying ordeal.
“She thought she was going to be seeing her sister that night in heaven,” Lindley recalled. “And she still looked at me with a smile and said, ‘Mom, I really hope next year at camp we do Mary Poppins again, because I still really want to be Bert.’ That is just hours after the fact.”
Some parents remain unsure
Still, not all parents are eager to send their daughters back to Camp Mystic.
John Ball, an attorney in McAllen, Texas, whose daughter was at Camp Mystic during the flood, said he has serious reservations, especially after the poor communication from camp officials about his daughter’s whereabouts.
Ball said he was out of town and didn’t learn that his daughter was safe until more than 12 hours after the flooding, when she was able to borrow a cellphone and call him.
“That was the hardest part, not knowing,” Ball said.
“I think we’re going to take this year off and see how it goes and what these changes look like that they’re implementing,” he said, “and we’ll go from there.”