The youngest girls at Camp Mystic in Texas were asleep in cabins as little as 225 feet from the river when flash flooding suddenly surged — causing the water to rise 20 feet above flood stage in just 90 minutes, starting around 4 a.m. on July 4.
At least five girls from the camp have been confirmed dead — all age 8 and 9 — and 12 others are still missing.
Also confirmed dead is the longtime owner of the Christian getaway — which has a storied history in Texas and counts ex First Lady Laura Bush as a former counselor.
Cabins at the site housing youngest campers are situated on low-laying “flats” less than one football field away from the banks of the Guadalupe River, according to the New York Times and satellite analysis of the camp.
Most of the missing girls are from those cabins, the Times reported.
Older girls were in cabins on higher ground — some 600 feet from the water.
The flood gauge at Hunt, Texas — about five miles up stream — shows that the water level rose 20 feet — from normal to major flooding — between about 4 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on July 4.
The floods, caused by a month’s worth of rain dropping in a matter of minutes, would have happened even earlier at Camp Mystic.
Survivor Elinor Lester, 13, was among the older girls housed on elevated ground known as Senior Hill at the camp.
“The camp was completely destroyed. It was really scary,” she told the newspaper.
Camp Mystic, a century-old Christian summer camp, has two sites, one at the Guadalupe River, and a Cypress Creek site to the south.
The five girls killed in the flooding at Camp Mystic have been named as Lila Bonner, 9, Janie Hunt, 9, Sarah Marsh, 8, Eloise Peck, 8, and Renee Smajstrla, 9.
About 750 girls were attending the camp this week when record flooding swept through the campsite, with floodwaters rising to almost 30 feet on Friday morning, the second-worst flooding on record, exceeding even the devastating 1987 floods.
Forty-three people have been reported dead so far in Kerr County, including 15 children. The overall death toll is now 59, and officials said, that figure is likely to rise.
Follow The Post’s coverage on the deadly Texas flooding
- Death toll in catastrophic Texas flooding rises to 27, including nine kids, as four girls from Christian camp are ID’d
- Woman found clinging to tree branch, screaming for help after being swept 20 miles downriver in raging Texas floods
- Two pals among nearly 2 dozen confirmed missing from Texas Christian camp after devastating flooding
- Catastrophic Texas Christian summer camp flooding eerily similar to 1987 disaster along same river
- Christian summer camp where girls went missing during devastating flooding has been attended by daughters of Texas’ political elite for 100 years
A mom of two girls at Camp Mystic has claimed staff “should have been on top” of the crisis, after warnings were issued on Thursday morning about the risk of flash flooding.
“They were posting stuff yesterday morning. They should have been on top of it,” Serena Hanor Aldrich, whose two daughters, ages 9 and 12, were both rescued from the camp, told the Times.
Her younger daughter was staying closer to the riverbank but was able to make it “to one of the buildings that wasn’t flooded anymore. They were up there for a couple of hours,” she said.
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