At least 23 kids from an all-girls summer camp were reported missing Friday after floods hit the south-central part of the state overnight. Parents in Texas were panicking and posting pictures of their young daughters on social media with pleas for help.
At least 24 people were killed and many more were missing after a storm dropped almost a foot of rain early Friday morning and caused the Guadalupe River to rise, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha told reporters Friday evening. Hill Country is a flood-prone area with many summer camps that are over a hundred years old and attract kids from all over the Lone Star State every year.
Officials from the state of Texas said that 23 to 25 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian camp by a river in Hunt, Texas, were still missing. They wouldn’t say how many people were lost in the area but did say that a huge search was going on and that 237 people had been found so far.
The Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, asked the people of Texas to pray a lot. “prayer-like on your knees that we find these girls.”
Rescuers evacuate some campers by helicopter
Friday afternoon, Texas Game Wardens said they had arrived at Camp Mystic and were beginning to move campers who had taken cover on higher ground.
Elinor Lester, 13, said she and her cabinmates were taken out of the building by helicopter after wading through floods. She remembered being startled awake at 1:30 a.m. by the sound of thunder and the impact of rain on the cabin windows.
Lester was one of the older girls who lived on Senior Hill, a raised area. The cabins for the younger campers—kids as young as 8 can go—are right next to the river and were the first to flood, she said.
Campers in the lower cabins went up the hill to find cover. She said that by morning, they didn’t have any food, power, or running water. The girls had to walk across a bridge with water up to their knees and calves when help came, according to Lester. They were given a rope to hold on to.
“The whole camp was destroyed,” she said. “It was very scary.” Everyone I know is safe and sound, but I know of some people who are lost and we don’t know where they are.
Liz Lester, her mother, said that her son had also fled from Camp La Junta, which was close by. Someone in charge woke up to find that the cabin was getting wet. They opened a window and helped the boys swim out. In Instagram posts, both Camp La Junta and Camp Waldemar, which is on the river, said that all of their kids and staff were safe.
Lizzie Lester cried when she saw her daughter again. She was holding a book and a small pet bear. She said that one of the lost was the daughter of a friend and a counselor for the younger kids at Camp Mystic.
She said, “My kids are safe, but knowing that other kids are still missing is eating me alive.”
Families of missing campers worry
Several dozen families in the area wrote on local Facebook groups that they had been devastated by calls from safety officials telling them that their girls had not yet been found among the destroyed camp cabins and trees.
In an email to the parents of the about 750 students, Camp Mystic said that their child is safe and sound if they haven’t heard from them directly.
In nearby Ingram, an elementary school was being used as a reunification center. On Friday afternoon, more than one hundred people gathered in a field in the hopes of seeing their loved ones get off of buses that had evacuated people. One girl with a Camp Mystic T-shirt on stood in water in her white socks and cried while being held by her mother.
A lot of people missed family and friends who had been at nearby camps and mobile home parks.
Camp Mystic is in an area called “flash flood alley,” according to Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country. This is a charitable endowment that is collecting money to help groups that are helping people affected by the disaster.
Dickson said, “When it rains, the water doesn’t soak into the ground.” “It goes down the hill quickly.”
The state started warning about potentially dangerous weather the day before. It rained 10 inches, which is more than the 3 to 6 inches that the National Weather Service said would fall.
Early in the morning, the Guadalupe River rose to 26 feet in just 45 minutes, Patrick said. This flooded the flood gauge.
In 1987, during terrible summer storms along the Guadalupe River, floods swallowed up a bus full of teens from another Christian camp. Ten kids from Pot O’ Gold Christian camp drowned when their bus couldn’t get them out of a site near Comfort, which is 33 miles east of Hunt, in time.
Flood turns Camp Mystic into a horror story
“It’s also just sad; the camp has been there for a long time and the cabins were wash away.”
Crane said that the camp, which has been around since 1926, is a safe place for young girls who want to feel more confident and independent. She remembered good times when she taught her campers about writing, made crafts, and competed in a canoe race with everyone at the end of each summer.
