Camp Mystic, the all-girls camp in Central Texas, devoted one brief paragraph to floods in its one-page emergency plan submitted to state officials. During a flood, campers in the lower section of camp along the Guadalupe River must “stay in their cabins unless told otherwise by the office,” the plan stated. “All cabins are constructed on high, safe locations.”
That plan was a failure not just by Camp Mystic’s leaders, but by the state agency that approved the evacuation procedures, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against the Texas Department of State Health Services by the parents of nine campers and counselors killed in catastrophic flooding there last summer.
“As the waters rose in the early hours of July 4, the camp staff panicked and delayed moving girls to safety until it was too late,” the suit asserts. “The lack of the state-required evacuation plan created chaos that cost 27 young lives.”
State regulations require camps to have written emergency plans, including procedures for the “evacuation of each occupied building.” Mystic had a plan, but not one that mentioned evacuation. In practice and in its own written criteria, the state approved any kind of emergency plan, whether or not it included specific evacuation plans, the suit claims.
The suit names six department officials, including Commissioner Jennifer Shuford and the inspector who visited Camp Mystic annually since 2015 to ensure compliance.
The inspector visited Mystic on July 2, 2025, approving its emergency plans just two days before flooding devastated the Hill Country of Central Texas. At Camp Mystic, heavy rains sowed chaos as the banks of the Guadalupe River and a quiet creek that ran through the camp swallowed buildings before many girls could escape. All but one of the 27 girls who died were staying in two cabins in a low-lying area known as the Flats.
The body of one girl, Cile Steward, is still missing. (Her parents are seeking an emergency order to stop the camp from reopening, arguing that the restoration process is destroying physical evidence related to their daughter’s death.)
“The D.S.H.S. officials responsible for licensing youth camps deliberately looked the other way,” a lawyer representing the families, Paul Yetter, said in a statement. “While Camp Mystic bears responsibility and is also being sued, state officials knew the emergency plan lacked a required evacuation component and still licensed the camp as safe.”
Ms. Shuford and a spokesman for Camp Mystic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A lawsuit filed against the camp last year by some of the families whose daughters died said that counselors had been told “by the camp” to stay in their cabins during a flood. Ultimately, some counselors pulled young girls through windows and scrambled up a rocky hill to safety. Others waded with their campers to a large recreation hall. Edward Eastland, the camp’s director, told The New York Times last year that he had not instructed anyone to stay in place during the evacuation.
The plaintiffs in the suit filed Monday are the parents of Chloe Childress and Katherine Ferruzzo, the two teenage counselors who were killed in the flooding, and the parents of seven campers who died.
The camp’s license, which must be renewed annually with the Texas Department of State Health Services, remains valid through March 6. The section of the camp affected by the flooding will remain closed this summer. Cypress Lake, a newer campus nearby that did not suffer serious damage and reported no deaths, will reopen to campers in May.
On its website, Camp Mystic said the Cypress Lake campus will have illuminated pathways to a designated meeting place on higher ground, and that evacuation drills will be conducted within 48 hours of campers’ arrivals.
Last fall, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a package of laws toughening safety requirements for youth camps in the state. The new laws require camps to move cabins away from floodplains, to operate emergency warning systems and public address systems that function even if there is no internet and to post clear evacuation routes, among other provisions.
A coalition of parents whose daughters died in the flooding at Mystic support the legislation, with most attending the signing ceremony in Austin in September. Other states, including Missouri and Alabama, are now considering similar legislation.
The Texas laws passed with bipartisan support. Among the supporters were Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, who later opened a state investigation into what happened at Camp Mystic.
“I was shocked to see Camp Mystic begin signing up campers for next year with so many questions unanswered about what happened that fateful morning,” he said in October when the investigation began.
Others in the state have criticized the reforms as too expensive and onerous for some camps, particularly the requirement for two sources of internet access, including a fiber-optic connection.
Critics include State Representative Wes Virdell, a Republican who represents much of the area affected by the flooding, including a stretch of the Guadalupe River that is home to about a dozen summer camps.
Camp Mystic will mark its 100th anniversary in April. It has a long history of summer flooding, although no one at the camp had died in floods before last summer.
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
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