3 hours ago
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The families of several campers and two counselors who died in July’s catastrophic Hill Country floods in Texas have filed multiple lawsuits against Camp Mystic and its owners, accusing them of “gross negligence”.
The 4 July floods, which claimed more than 130 lives across the region and was described as some of the US’s deadliest floods in decades, devastated the 99-year-old Christian all-girls camp, located on the banks of the Guadalupe river in Kerr county.
Twenty-five young campers, two teenage counselors and the camp’s longtime owner, Dick Eastland, died after flood waters inundated the property.
Across a series of lawsuits filed by Monday, several families of the young campers and counselors described the tragedy as “entirely preventable” and allege that the camp leaders ignored known flood risks, did not have adequate safety procedures in place, and failed to protect the campers and counselors.
The complaints name Camp Mystic and members of the Eastland family, who owned and operated the camp for decades, as defendants.
One complaint, filed on behalf of the families of five campers and two counselors who died, accuses the camp of putting “profit over safety” and alleges that it chose to house campers “in cabins sitting in flood-prone areas, despite the risk” to “avoid the cost of relocating the cabins”.
According to the filing, as the river began to rise on 4 July, camp leaders directed “its groundskeepers to spend over an hour evacuating camp equipment, not its campers and counselors”.
The filing alleges that the camp “chose not to evacuate the Bubble Inn and Twins cabins when other campers and counselors had been moved to safe, higher ground just 300 feet away”.
“Instead, the camp chose to order its campers and counselors to remain in the Bubble Inn and Twins cabins while the flood waters overwhelmed the camp,” it adds. “Finally, when it was too late, the camp made a hopeless ‘rescue’ effort from its self-created disaster in which 25 campers, two counselors, and the camp director died.”
The lawsuits assert that the section of the Guadalupe River where the camp is located “has always been prone to deadly flash flooding” – and that the owners were “well aware of the risks of flooding”. One filing alleges that despite this, “no flood evacuation plans were in place before the girls arrived at Camp Mystic”.
The families are seeking more than $1m in damages and have requested a jury trial, accusing the defendants of negligence, gross negligence, failure to warn, premises liability, wrongful death, survival action and breach of fiduciary duty, among other claims.
The legal actions come as Camp Mystic announced in September that it had plans to partially reopen next summer, which drew backlash from several of the victims’ families.
In one of lawsuits, the families have accused the camp of “using the deceased girls as a recruiting tool, touting a ‘memorial’ they would build in their honor – without ever asking the parents of the girls”.
The families also wrote in a complaint that the “defendants rush to reopen their for-profit campsite, while parents still grieve their lost daughters” – and pointed out that the body of one camper, Cile Steward, still remains missing.
“The camp is ready to move on, but these girls and their parents first deserve transparency and justice,” the suits adds.
In a statement to the Guardian on Tuesday morning, Camp Mystic said: “We continue to pray for the grieving families and ask for God’s healing and comfort.”
Camp Mystic’s attorney Jeff Ray said that “we empathize with the families of the campers and counselors and all families in the Hill Country who lost loved ones in the horrific and unprecedented flood of [4 July].
“We intend to demonstrate and prove that this sudden surge of flood waters far exceeded any previous flood in the area by several magnitudes, that it was unexpected and that no adequate warning systems existed in the area.”
Ray added: “We disagree with several accusations and misinformation in the legal filings regarding the actions of Camp Mystic and Dick Eastland, who lost his life as well. We will thoroughly respond to these accusations in due course.”
A trial date for the lawsuits had not immediately been set.
