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Tonight on Dateline. The girls were terrified. I see the water pouring into our cabin.
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It literally swept me off my feet. Oh my gosh, what do we do? It happened last 4th of July.
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The wall of water that swallowed Camp Mystic. We learned that Blakely was missing.
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What's going through your mind? It was torturous. I said, where's Ellen? She said, the entire cabin is missing.
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We prayed to God that she was out there holding on. You are seeing trunks float down the river.
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You're seeing cars fly by you. 27 girls died. Should have never happened. Could this tragedy have been averted?
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100%. Our girls should be here. They were told to stay in their cabins. Hundreds of girls' lives were saved.
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So you're making an argument for keeping them inside the cabins. It's called shelter in place.
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It is the closest to hell that I had ever been. The terrifying floods here at Camp Mystic.
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One year later, anguish, anger, and haunting questions. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here is After the Flood For many kids, summer camp is a rite of passage At Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp in the Texas hill country
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That tradition ran deep I have been attending Mystic for 10 summers as a camper.
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First year counselor Ainsley Beshara. I had always known that I was going to be a counselor.
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And Mystic is the closest thing to heaven that I've ever experienced. It's where my faith began.
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Owned and operated by Dick and Tweedy Eastland since 1974, Camp Mystic had drawn Texas families to the Guadalupe River for almost a century.
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They were so invested in every single girl. I mean, you could just see the love that the two of them had, and it was so special.
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11-year-old Gwen Getton, in her fourth year, had felt that love. Now it was her 9-year-old sister Ellen's turn.
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She was finally old enough to be a big girl and kind of go off and, you know, not have her mom and dad around.
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Their parents, Jenny and Doug. How did Gwen feel about having her sister at the camp?
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Very excited. They had already figured out before they even left what activities they were going to try to do together.
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Camp Mystic offered everything from horseback riding to river canoeing. Lindsay McCrory hoped that for her 8-year-old daughter Blakely, it could also be a place of healing.
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Blakely had lost her father a few months before camp, my late husband, after a brief battle with cancer.
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And then her uncle died in June, my brother. So we were happy for her to spend time outdoors and just be a kid.
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Blakely, Ellen, and more than 500 campers arrived on June 29, 2025, spread across cabins near the river and up on higher ground.
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Blakely was assigned to a cabin called Twins One, one of two interconnected cabins about 400 feet from the river.
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Ellen got Bubble Inn right next door. And Ainsley was a few steps away in Gigglebox,
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one of three counselors responsible for 16 young campers aged 8 to 10. So younger kids would have been staying closer to the river?
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Yes. The camp settled into its usual rhythm of games, activities, and Sunday devotionals.
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Ellen went fishing and joined the crafts group. As the end of the first week neared, she and her sister looked forward to the big July 4th celebration.
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On July 3rd, Gwen went to her cabin. They were having a dance party and kissed Ellen goodnight and Ellen kissed her cheek.
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They said they loved each other. Outside, a storm was brewing. a powerful weather system had stalled over central Texas
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and was about to unleash waves of thunderstorms over the same area for hours. Dick Eastland was awake and monitoring the weather
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when the National Weather Service issued its first flash flood warning on July 4th at 1.14 a.m.
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It was scary. About a half hour later, 10-year-old Lucy Kennedy woke up disoriented and frightened.
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Her cabin was down the road from Ellen and Blakely. There was like a really loud thunder and my whole cabin, I think everyone woke up because it was really loud.
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I mean it sounded like people were shooting fireworks off in our cabin. The rain was falling so hard that by 2.14 a.m., an hour after the flash flood warning,
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a dry creek that cut through the camp had turned into a torrent. The river kept rising at a record rate.
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At 3.11 a.m., Dick Eastland and his son Edward, who was in charge of the younger campers,
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started evacuating the cabins closest to the river. About ten minutes later, it was Lucy's cabin's turn.
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When the water started coming up, was anybody giving you instructions as to what to do?
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Our counselors said to grab like maybe like a pillow and blanket just in case we had to sleep
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and like a water and a flashlight and then they told us to be strong and go to the wreck
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and then they went after us. At 3 a a counselor snapped this photo Girls from Lucy cabin struggling through rising waters to reach the two wreck hall How strong was the water
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Really strong. I mean, was it pulling at you or pulling at things around you? Yeah.
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Were you able to stay close to your friends? Yeah. Ainsley saw Lucy's group race by her cabin and wondered as a counselor what she should do.
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The girls are either running from their cabins or they're being taken in a suburban in a truck through the main road.
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And I remember listening through the window and we're being told to stay in our cabin, stay in our cabin, stay in our cabin.
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I see the water pouring into our cabin. Without a second thought, girls put on your shoes and grab a rain jacket and we're leaving.
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Ainsley tried to open the door. When the water came through the door, it literally swept me off my feet.
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I remember slamming the door somehow and just being in a state of what now? And at this time, a worker from the camp had come up to our window.
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It was Edward Eastland, her camp director. They had said to me, this is crazy. This is crazy.
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I don't know what to do. I remember thinking in my mind, you don't know what to do?
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I have 16 little girls behind me and I'm just as afraid as they are. They decided to go through the window. Edward helped them break out one of the screens,
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then rushed to evacuate another cabin. And we get the first girl to get through the window and thank
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God that she was too afraid to jump through the window first. So without a second thought,
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I jumped out of the window to grab her and just put her and show her that it was okay.
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And that is when I realized how fast, high, and rapid the water was moving. I mean, it was rushing just enough to easily swipe a little girl off of her feet and take her away from us.
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It was terrifying. Fear was about to turn into a race for survival. Help! Ainsley and two other counselors were trying to save their 8-10 year old campers in the biggest flood camp Mystic had ever seen.
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When they started passing them through their cabin window, the water was almost knee high and rising fast.
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I mean, I would carry three of them at a time, as many as I possibly could. And we saw this pavilion in higher ground to our cabin.
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And we all made trip after trip after trip until all of the girls were out of our cabin and up to the pavilion.
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We were able to look back on our cabin. You could already see water rushing through the windows and pouring into the cabin from every angle.
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But soon the water reached the pavilion. There was no way out other than a steep hill behind them.
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It was a very steep, steep climb. And with the rain coming down, it was almost a waterfall.
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So we would walk the girls up and do a quick head count of them. And we would just yell prayers over them and just continue to climb the hill.
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And each time the water would rise. What was happening below them seemed incomprehensible.
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So the lightning would strike and it would kind of light up just a very narrow viewpoint for you.
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And you would just see just the destruction that this water was causing to our sanctuary.
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You are seeing trunks float down the river. You're seeing cars fly by you. You're hearing the trees snap.
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I mean, it sounds like they're exploding. The most horrific sounds, though, were the voices.
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You're hearing screams of names. you're hearing screams for help over and over and over again.
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Some of the screams for help were coming from twins' cabins where Blakely was trapped.
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A worker on the second floor of the commissary shot this video of twins' cabins at 3.26 a.m.,
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several feet of water swirling below the windows. 24 minutes later, the cabins were almost entirely submerged.
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The situation at Ellen's cabin, Bubble Inn, was just as dire. Around 3.35 a.m., Dick Eastland arrived and began moving girls into his truck.
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Fifteen minutes later, he radioed Edward for help. I have Bubble Inn cabin in my car, he pleaded.
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I'm stuck against a tree. Then, at 3.58 a.m., a worker who was trapped on the second floor of the commissary made
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a call to 911. We don't know what to do. Okay, right now the best thing I can tell you is to get to as higher ground as you can.
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I know it's not the most ideal. We cannot, there's water everywhere. We cannot move.
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Okay. We are upstairs in a room and the water level is rising. The water was also rising at Rec Hall, where Lucy was.
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We were on the bottom floor and then we had to move to the top floor because it was getting higher.
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What did you hang on to? Um, we, like, so we didn't really, like, hang onto anything.
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The water was, like, about right here. And then we just stayed on the second floor until it went down.
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That happened just before 6 a.m. The water slowly receded. Ainsley and her campers worked their way back to the pavilion at the bottom of the hill.
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A truck was dropping off several girls from twins' cabins who had been swept into the current and survived by clinging for hours to a branch of an uprooted
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tree. You just run out and you grab these little girls who look like a ghost and you just hug them
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and say it okay it okay like you safe we have you And that wasn the only survival story Ainsley learned another group trapped in their cabin stayed afloat on mattresses the rising water stopping just as they reached the ceiling
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And at this point, the sky starts to lighten and it's morning time. And so your vision is just slowly getting better and you're seeing more and more.
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and your heart is breaking at every instant. Everyone assembled at Wreck Hall, where Edward's wife was leading a headcount.
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And so one by one, each cabin is called to the front of Wreck Hall, where Mary Liz has a roster sheet and is going each girl one by one,
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calling their name out, laying eyes on them, making sure that they're there. Sixteen campers and counselors from twins' cabins were present,
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But when Edward's wife called the names of Blakely and 10 other cabin mates, there was no response.
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And that was the first realization of, there are girls missing. We're the fourth cabin in that line of the youngest girls.
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And we're just watching them in complete and utter disbelief and shock. Then they called Ellen's cabin, Bubble Inn.
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I don't think I'll ever forget the moment when the headcount was done. and Bubble Inn was called and they weren't there.
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Not a single girl was there. Kirk County 911, why is the location in your emergency?
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We're going to die. I have an infant. She can't hold her breath. In the early morning hours of July 4th, emergency services up and down the Guadalupe River in Kerr County were overwhelmed with calls for help.
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I need help because I can't swim and it's getting dangerous and I can't get out.
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Overnight, the river rose a record 37 feet. Experts would call it a one in a thousand year flood.
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It was 7.22 a.m. when one of the Eastlands called 911 for the first time. Here at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, we need search and rescue.
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Okay, what's going on? We're missing as many as 20 to 40 people. Winn Kennedy, who is Lucy's mom, lives about 10 miles from Camp Mystic.
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On July 4th, she woke up to text messages from panicked parents asking about their daughters.
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Since I'm local, they were texting me about the flood and my response was that I'm not even worried about them.
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They're in the safest place they can be. And I didn't know how bad it was or how severe it was.
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Fortunately, Lucy was okay. I was able to get through to certain people because I know a lot of people in the community.
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So I know I was able to find out Lucy was safe. Hundreds of miles away in Houston, there was no sign of the storm.
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The Gettons planned to celebrate the holiday with a nice dinner and fireworks. They were caught off guard when a camp representative called them.
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Ellen was missing. Jenny texted one of the camp directors. I said, where's Ellen?
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She said, I don't know. I said, what do you mean you don't know? And she said that the entire cabin is missing.
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And they were with one of the other heads of leadership. That was Dick Eastland, a man they trusted.
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We were told that Dick was with them, so we thought he was just in a place where he didn't have cell service.
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We packed an overnight bag and got in the car thinking that we were going to pick up our girls.
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You know, death didn't even cross my mind. That changed when they arrived at a local elementary school where rescuers brought campers to be reunited with their families.
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I heard one of the other dads say, we've got some bad news here. And at that same time, I was hearing about human bodies in the river, and then it was kind of like literally being shot in the chest.
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She's like, what? Another parent told them that their daughter, Gwen, was safe. They soon spotted her, traumatized and terrified about her sister.
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She was hysterical, and she dropped to her knees and screamed, I don't want to be an only child.
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And what did you say as a parent? We said, calm down. She's fine. She's strong. She's a strong swimmer.
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you know, they're going to find her. By nightfall, all the campers and counselors from Bubble Inn
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were still unaccounted for. So were 11 from twins' cabins, one and two, and one from another cabin,
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27 girls in all. Their families were brought to a nearby church and told to wait for news.
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The parents would sit together in rows, and we would hold hands together. When you started hearing
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the parents getting the news to go to the morgue and you heard their screams. That's something you can't unhear.
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You'd hear their wailing and then us, we as parents would start to just erupt with
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uninhibited emotion, just fear. Later that night, they heard that rescuers had located Dick Eastland's truck in a grove
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by the river near the camp. Inside, the bodies of Dick and three bubble-in girls, but not Ellen.
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We cried on our knees and prayed to God that she was out there and clinging on and holding on.
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Blakely's mom, Lindsay, had been on vacation overseas when she heard Blakely was missing.
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We went to the airport, got on the flight. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. Still hopeful, she arrived at the church two days after the flood, but then a Texas
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Ranger asked for her DNA That when I realized that she might not have made it out alive from this flood Searchers found Blakely body the next day
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She was still wearing a necklace her mother bought her. I gave her this necklace before camp that says Mystic,
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and it's in the colors of the camp, green and white. It meant a lot to both of you.
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It did. Lindsay had lost so much that year, her husband, her brother, and now her precious eight-year-old daughter gone in the spot she hoped would be a refuge.
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It was going to be a place of healing for her, but it actually became a place of death for her too.
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As Lindsay was coming to grips with the worst of news, Houston firefighter Tyler Graff and his rescue dog, Truckee, arrived in town to join the search effort.
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The aftermath was pretty awe-inspiring, shocking. Smells of disaster, smells of decomposition.
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Canoes in the trees. When you come down into the basin, it's like entering a whole other realm.
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It's somber and it's full of sadness. By the time you got here, were you on a search and rescue mission or just a search mission? Search and recovery. By the time
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that we were searching, we weren't looking for live victims. About a week after the flood, on a muddy bank across the river,
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Tyler found a single crock, charms still attached, flowers, a cupcake, a name tag, Ellen Getten.
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We found it right here on this point, on this other side here. It was a very somber moment,
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and we knew that this crock had some sort of story to it. The story of a nine-year-old girl whose family was desperately waiting to hear what happened to her.
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The days immediately after the flood were a blur for Jenny and Doug Gettin as they waited for word about Ellen, knowing but not knowing.
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We waited a week, and that whole week Gwen was so hopeful that there was some way that she had made it through.
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And the reality is there was no hope. They got the call on July 12th. A Texas Ranger called us and said, we have her body. We have Ellen's body.
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We weren't allowed to see her because she'd been in the water for so long. And that haunts me every single day.
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None of the 27 missing Camp Mystic campers and counselors survived. They're known as Heaven's 27.
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38 kids lost their sisters. 51 parents lost daughters that day. The funerals went on for days.
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When Ellen was laid to rest, 11-year-old Gwen eulogized her. It does not matter if you have known Ellen for nine years or nine days, because just by looking at her beautiful face, you can tell how kind and sweet and amazing she is.
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One of the things I love about Ellen is her funny laugh. She was always so creative in the most hilarious ways.
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Gwen spoke and did an incredible job to honor her sister. And it was awful. I mean, you talk about nightmare.
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We're in this massive church that probably holds 1,600 people. And how are we here?
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Afterwards, the Gettons struggled to go on. It's like an amputation. You're walking around without part of you.
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and you have to learn somehow to continue with life, missing a whole piece of it.
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In their Houston home, the Gettons surrounded themselves with reminders of Ellen
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and held on to the letters she wrote before she died. When we got home on July 6, we had some letters waiting for us.
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They're still sealed. We can't bring ourselves to open them up. We're not ready to do that yet.
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I think opening them seems like more of a permanence, and I'm not there yet. Blakely's mom knew she had to keep the memory of her eight-year-old daughter alive somehow.
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She vowed to talk about Blakely whenever she could. She just was a ton of fun. She would always play practical jokes on us.
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One time she put her pet box turtle in my purse. She was a young girl that had an old soul.
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She even asked me at one point before camp if I would date again because she wanted to have a stepfather.
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She just had such a big heart. The mystic community was also mourning its patriarch, Dick Eastland.
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When we found out about all of the deaths and then we found out about Dick's passing,
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It was a little piece of the camp dying. And Mystic is such a special place to me.
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So that was such a hard pill to swallow. Her nightmares are never ending. So is her guilt.
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Finding out that girls did not make it. And that I had. is a survivor's guilt that I can't even explain in words.
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Because why am I here and others are not? Ainsley says the kindness of others helped her get through the bad days.
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Kindness helped Blakely's mom too, along with videos of her daughter that she watched on repeat.
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Pink Pony Club, I'm gonna keep on dancing. Have you been able to go into her room?
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Yes, I've gone in her room. I've even slept in her bed. It's a way for me to hold on to those memories.
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When we used to read in her bed, she was doing little projects in her room, playing.
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I definitely don't shut the door to her room and I'm not putting my heart on a shelf per se.
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After their lives were shattered came the questions. We brought these mothers together to ask what they learned when they went digging.
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Could this tragedy have been averted? 100%. I'm Natalie Landry and my daughter is Lainey.
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I'm Wendy Childress and my daughter is Chloe. I'm Patricia Bellows and my daughter is Margaret.
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I'm Ellen Sheedy and my daughter is Margaret Sheedy. I'm Sam Jacoby and my daughter is Mary-Kate Jacoby.
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I'm Andrea Ferruzzo and my daughter's Catherine Ferruzzo. I'm Ellen Tronzo and my daughter's Greta Tronzo.
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These Houston moms all lost daughters at Camp Mystic. They've leaned on each other ever since.
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Ellen's mom, Jenny Gitton, gathered them at her house. These people are really the only ones who truly understand what I went through.
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I don't think anyone can relate to what we've experienced except for the other 26 families.
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I have trouble relating to my best friends prior to July 4th. Hearing about their busy lives, their carpools, that's not my life anymore.
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Nothing is the same after. There's the before and then there's the after. Because the person you were before is gone. That person is dead.
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They're haunted by questions about that night. There's a desperate need to know what did you go through?
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Were you alone? Were you with someone? Were you afraid? Was it fast? And they say the Eastlands, the family they trusted to keep their girls safe,
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remained virtually silent after the flood. We've never received a debrief, if you will.
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So they've never gathered you together as a group? No, they've never called us. a personal condolence note here,
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a text with a Bible verse there. Lovely, but not what you're looking for. Not what we're looking for, not the answers that we need.
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In the absence of those answers, these parents decided to dig for the facts on their own,
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talking to as many people as they could. And what they found only deepened their anguish.
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Could this tragedy have been averted? A hundred percent, yes. Our girls should be here.
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With the time frame, there's time for them all, the whole camp, to evacuate safely.
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They compiled a timeline that raised troubling questions about what the Eastlands did and didn't do that night.
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A little bit after 1 a.m., there was a flash flood warning issued that, you know, flooding, possible, you know, casualties as a result of flooding.
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That warning came at 1 a The National Weather Service saying a life flash flood was imminent or already underway They never made an announcement on the loudspeaker and two counselors had to go argue with leadership because water was coming in their cabins
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To the best of our knowledge, they didn't start moving girls until after three o'clock in the morning.
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So they waited roughly two hours. Not only was there a two-hour delay, they say the camp was unprepared for what was coming.
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I'd like to know why didn't they have an evacuation plan for flooding, which was their most logical natural disaster.
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But you're saying there was no protocol. The protocol was a stay in the cabin. Even though the two-story rack hall and safety was only a short walk from their cabins,
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It was extremely poor decision-making that we believe led to our children's deaths.
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When they read the emergency instructions in the counselor's manual that Andrea Ferruzzo found in her daughter's belongings, they were flabbergasted.
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It said, stay in your cabins. An announcement will be made on the loudspeaker. And if the loudspeaker is not working, we'll use walkie-talkies.
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And I talked to other counselors who said there were no walkie-talkies. And then the final sentence in this flood evacuation plan says, all cabins are on high safe locations.
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And we all just were reeling. Ainsley confirms she never saw walkie-talkies in the cabins and had no emergency training in case of a flood.
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It didn't feel like there was a big pressure to be this guardian and all of these things.
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I was just a counselor for these girls, and we were going to have a great term and have fun together.
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In late September, less than three months after the tragedy, Camp Mystic announced it would reopen for the 2026 summer season,
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although the cabins where the victims had been staying would remain closed. Did it shock you? Completely.
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You can't put your child in the same care of the Eastland family when we don't even know what happened yet.
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and everything that went wrong. It's unthinkable that they would open a camp so soon after 27 people died on their watch.
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You know, there's still one camper missing, Seal Steward. She's not been recovered yet.
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This isn't over. Right. the parents were so outraged they demanded the state deny mystic a license for the 2026 season
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what is the rush it shows that they want profit over camp safety for right now mystic has said that it is their christian ministry to provide an environment for girls
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to grow spiritually and make lifelong friendships and that is wonderful but that does no good
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if your child doesn't come home alive. In October, Texas lawmakers opened an investigation
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into what happened at Camp Mystic. Weeks later, most of the victim's families, including many here and Blakely's mom,
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filed lawsuits against the camp and the Eastlands. What do you want the lawsuit to accomplish?
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I want the lawsuit to, you know, show transparency what would happen, all the events leading up to this tragedy, as well as accountability.
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What is it that you allege? We allege that there was gross negligence. Their lawsuits point to something else, too.
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The Eastlands successfully appealed to FEMA to have cabins in a flood hazard area reclassified.
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And then the lawsuits say the Eastlands failed to share that information with parents There was a known flooding risk that was very well known to the Eastland family who runs the camp There was no disclosure or communication to us
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What would the Eastlands have to say about that night? It was absolute chaos. It was not absolute chaos.
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You had no plan. That's not true. The bereaved families waited eight months to hear an explanation about the tragedy from the Eastlands.
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Finally, in the spring, Eastland family members testified at pre-trial hearings.
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Edward Eastland, who was responsible for the cabins near the river, spent hours answering questions, like this one, about that early morning warning.
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You got a 114 code red that you slept through, right? Correct. And this. You did not get on the loudspeaker and tell anybody what to do, correct?
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No, we didn't. The attorney, who was representing the family of Seal Stewart, the camper whose body has still not been recovered,
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was scathing about the Eastlands' actions that night. It was absolute chaos. It was not absolute chaos.
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You had no plan. That's not true. You had no plan. Your dad was making it up in the moment.
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He was not. Who had the plan? He did. Who knew the plan? I did. There was no plan that anyone was trained in.
00:34:00
We didn't have it written down, but we have that plan. Days later, at a Texas legislative hearing, Edward apologized for the deaths of the 27 girls.
00:34:11
The world was a better place with them in it. And the anger at us for not being able to keep them safe feels completely reasonable.
00:34:20
When I first saw Edward Eastland, I started sobbing because I realized that he was the
00:34:26
one who was in charge of my children's safety and he failed them. It was my first time to hear from him at all.
00:34:33
The Eastlands are challenging the narrative of what led to the girls' deaths here at Camp
00:34:37
Mistick. say it wasn't the rising river, or allegations that they waited too long to act.
00:34:43
The river did not kill these young ladies. The family declined our interview request.
00:34:49
Instead, we got their attorney, Michael Watts. The problem was, is that where this particular weather system stalled,
00:34:58
led to flood coming behind, not from the river, but from the other direction. Watts told us the video shot from the second floor of the commissary
00:35:07
supports their case. He says it shows water from the hillside inundating the cabins.
00:35:13
And you can see in the video that the water's coming this way, but the river's in the opposite
00:35:19
direction. It's real easy to reach the conclusion that what's been alleged, that somehow the water
00:35:24
rose from the river, just truthfully did not happen. Your data says it didn't happen. It's not
00:35:29
just my data. It is what the digital evidence shows. Weather experts we consulted, including
00:35:34
the National Weather Service disputed that explanation. They say the flood was caused by
00:35:40
the rising river, and that's what created the eddies and swirls in the video. And about those
00:35:46
appeals to FEMA to remove buildings from the flood hazard area. You knew that the cabins that were on
00:35:52
a floodplain. No, they're not. That's not true. Watt says updated digital maps showed the buildings
00:35:59
were not in fact in the floodplain and FEMA agreed. The bottom line is that's in the press and somehow
00:36:07
Dick Eastland had this unusual political ability to tell FEMA what to do. That's not the way it works. After the tragedy, FEMA
00:36:15
said its maps are snapshots in time and not predictions of where floods will happen. Watts says nothing
00:36:23
could have prepared the Eastlands for what was coming, not even that early morning warning.
00:36:28
We get flash flood warnings in Kerr County repetitively. Every time it rains, there's a
00:36:33
risk of flash floods But that not the same thing as what happened here This was a thousand year flood that nobody ever seen before But why not a specific flood policy We do We have a specific flood policy
00:36:44
You stay in the cabins until help can come and help you. Hundreds of girls' lives were saved by that policy.
00:36:52
So you're making an argument for keeping them inside the cabins during this kind of rain event?
00:36:56
It's called shelter in place. Watts argues it wouldn't have made sense for the youngest campers to walk through the raging waters.
00:37:04
because they would have been washed away. Would that have happened had they responded immediately to that warning at 1.14 a.m.?
00:37:12
So the warning at 1.14 is a text that certain people didn't get. But the problem is it wasn't delivered. There was no siren.
00:37:20
The Eastlands blamed the state for that because almost a decade ago, lawmakers refused to fund a flood detection system with sirens.
00:37:29
What you need is you need things upstream that says, we got a wall of water coming and immediately activate a siren that's going to wake up everybody
00:37:39
here. That would have given them the time. That would have saved the lives and it would have
00:37:44
saved all the lives downriver. All told, more than 130 people died along the Guadalupe that night.
00:37:52
Ainsley, who led her campers to safety, has struggled with the question of blame.
00:37:58
It's easy to look and point a finger to ease your mind. I don't think there's one finger that we can point.
00:38:08
I don't think that's fair. Lucy's mom, Wynn, agrees with Ainsley. It's just not black and white.
00:38:17
I do personally know how this camping community works. Their lives were this camp, and they did everything they could.
00:38:26
They could. And yes, there have been floods in the past, but nothing ever towards any of those cabins, ever.
00:38:33
Wynn, along with hundreds of other parents, was planning to send Lucy back to Mystic.
00:38:38
Some kids might think it's scary going back, you know, after the flood. Do you worry at all?
00:38:43
I just feel like that's not going to happen again, and it wasn't their fault that it happened.
00:38:50
But in late April, the Eastlands abruptly decided not to reopen the camp. Welcome everyone today. We will hear from the investigators.
00:38:58
Last week, investigators from the state legislative committee reported back after an eight-month probe.
00:39:05
Their findings confirmed what many of the victim's parents had come to believe. Camp Mystic did not have written emergency plans that comply with state requirements,
00:39:15
did not adequately prepare, and did not timely evacuate despite ample opportunity to do so.
00:39:22
The distances were very short, and especially with the timeline that we've documented about how much time there was to evacuate, these girls could have gotten there.
00:39:35
Days after that report came out, Camp Mystic filed for bankruptcy. As the 4th of July approaches, the first anniversary of the tragedy, these parents take comfort from a new Camp Safety Act they helped push through the state legislature.
00:39:53
But otherwise, comfort is elusive for the Heaven's 27 families. It's the permanence that's shattering.
00:40:04
And it just doesn't stop. We have gone through hell and back, and we're still going through it.
00:40:14
Every day, you know, we have to make a choice to go on. I heard that there's a special place.
00:40:24
Their questions remain. Their lawsuits are pending. And there's a huge hole in their lives that their girls used to fill.
00:40:37
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.