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Clinging to trees, screaming for help: Lawsuits paint heartbreaking picture of girls’ last moments at Camp Mystic
CNN ^ | Nov 18, 2025 | Alaa Elassar, Holly Yan

Posted on 11/19/2025 3:54:29 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege

In the pitch-black, storm-lashed hours before dawn on Independence Day, surging floodwaters ravaged Hunt and Kerr County in central Texas, including the summer camp filled with sleeping children.

The catastrophic flooding killed 27 girls and counselors at Camp Mystic.

The court filings accuse the camp of failing to move cabins out of flood-prone areas, responding poorly to the emergency, and putting profits ahead of the safety of the girls in their care..

Most of the cabins had been located in FEMA’s 100-year “Special Flood Hazard Area” up until 2013. That’s when the camp petitioned FEMA to remove most of the cabins from floodplain maps, says the lawsuit filed by the families of five campers and two counselors. The move did nothing but spare the Eastlands costly insurance premiums and expensive renovations, the filing states.

“Since July 1932, Camp Mystic knew that cabins that housed defenseless little girls sat in the bullseye of potential flood waters from the Guadalupe River and never said a word about it to trusting parents,” the Peck family lawsuit says. Since that date, Camp Mystic continued to play Russian Roulette with the lives of the little girls, disregarding what Camp Mystic knew would be an unspeakable tragedy when the flood hit those cabins.”

…He [Eastland] successfully pushed for a new flood warning system after 10 children at a nearby camp were swept to their deaths in 1987, and in recent years served on the board of the local river authority as it supported renewed efforts to improve warnings on the Guadalupe.

…“The overpowering waters cascading through the Camp … did the inevitable by tearing children away from the roofs, doors, furniture, trees, and hands of others that they clung to, and propelling them down the raging river into the inescapable darkness.”

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: US: Florida; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: ambulancechasers; campmystic; cherfilusmccormick; edwincherfilus; fema; flood; florida; hillcountry; lawsuits; texas; tx
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The lawsuit filed by the family of 9-year-old Ellen Getten says that even as families were learning to live with an empty bed, the camp was promoting its reopening, soliciting donations and preparing to return “to business as usual.”
1 posted on 11/19/2025 3:54:29 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
It was a horrible natural disaster.

It was nobody's fault. An act of nature. Might as well sue God.

2 posted on 11/19/2025 4:03:08 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie ( O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and his mercy endures forever. — Psalm 106)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

Clearly you didn’t read the profoundly obvious points of human culpability in the matter. The cabins were not up to code and the codes were intentionally evaded since 2013.


3 posted on 11/19/2025 4:08:06 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
One of those little weather alert radios would have come in handy.

4 posted on 11/19/2025 4:11:47 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie ( O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and his mercy endures forever. — Psalm 106)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

No code could have helped in that once a century flash flood.

In May 2010 we had the same type rain in middle TN. Hundreds of houses gone. Downtown Nashville flooded from the Cumberland River up to 7th Avenue.

No code violations.

It happens.


5 posted on 11/19/2025 4:11:51 PM PST by Fledermaus ("It turns out all we really needed was a new President!")
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

Not wise to have cabins in 100 year flood plane with no escape plan. Just not excusable.


6 posted on 11/19/2025 4:13:04 PM PST by The_Media_never_lie (NO rooftop security at the Charlie Kirk assassination event? Did we learn nothing from Butler, PA?)
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To: Fledermaus

The location of a select group of cabins was inexcusable given the extensive knowledge of the geology the camp-owner had, the casualties of neighboring camps in floods like the one in 1987, and his own lobbying for flood alert systems over the decades.


7 posted on 11/19/2025 4:16:24 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Governor Dinwiddie
>>It was nobody’s fault.

I and many others watched on radar that dense low pressure system (remains of a Pacific hurricane) as it entered the Big Bend from Mexico moving east and then to the Trans Pecos and Hill Country.

I have screens shots that I text to another FReeper.

8 posted on 11/19/2025 4:17:45 PM PST by Deaf Smith (When a Texan takes his chances, chances will be taken that's for sure.)
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To: The_Media_never_lie
All my life I've been reading about people camping in a draw or arroyo. Then a thunderstorm
dozens of miles of way sends a torrent and wipes away the campers. It is not a rare occurrence.

9 posted on 11/19/2025 4:26:23 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie ( O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and his mercy endures forever. — Psalm 106)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

The once in a century excuse doesn’t work because there were prior floods and prior casualties at neighboring camps in years past that the owner was well aware of, the same way he was aware of the volatile location some (not all) of the cabins were in by the riverbank.

None of the counselors were properly trained or drilled in case of any emergency…To the contrary were told basically to stay put.

Texas officials acknowledge that funding for flood alert systems and repeated lobbying on behalf of updating them went ignored.


10 posted on 11/19/2025 5:04:39 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

This sounds like it was written by two of CNN’s foreign scumbags. More liberal sob stories.


11 posted on 11/19/2025 5:06:00 PM PST by FlingWingFlyer (Freedom isn't free but Socialism is expensive as hell. American taxpayers will have to pay for it)
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To: FlingWingFlyer

Numerous Texas publications as well as *Republican* TX lawmakers have acknowledged culpability both at the camp level and state/local level.


12 posted on 11/19/2025 5:10:08 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

A so called 100 year flood is more accurately a 30-40 year flood.


13 posted on 11/19/2025 5:13:11 PM PST by The_Media_never_lie (NO rooftop security at the Charlie Kirk assassination event? Did we learn nothing from Butler, PA?)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege
Weather alert radios are a low tech but reliable means of getting warnings. Cell phones will give
you a warning too, but I bet cell phone coverage was poor at that location. Unfortunately such a
flood was far far from anyone's mind.

14 posted on 11/19/2025 5:18:26 PM PST by Governor Dinwiddie ( O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious, and his mercy endures forever. — Psalm 106)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie


15 posted on 11/19/2025 5:22:16 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: Governor Dinwiddie
And I don’t think your Nashville example is the same as:

Most of the cabins had been located in FEMA’s 100-year “Special Flood Hazard Area” up until 2013. That’s when the camp petitioned FEMA to remove most of the cabins from floodplain maps, says the lawsuit filed by the families of five campers and two counselors. The move did nothing but spare the Eastlands costly insurance premiums and expensive renovations, the filing states.

16 posted on 11/19/2025 5:26:52 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
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To: FlingWingFlyer

So reporting on the death of those children is nothing more than a “Liberal sob story.”

G-d alone knows if you are as truly awful as you appear in that post.


17 posted on 11/19/2025 5:56:24 PM PST by lastchance (Cognovit Dominus qui sunt eius.)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege; Fledermaus

Not to mention that the only person “authorized” to sound the emergency alert was on vacation or otherwise indisposed with no plan for a second in command.


18 posted on 11/19/2025 6:14:21 PM PST by lightman (Beat the Philly fraud machine the Amish did onest, ja? Nein, zweimal they did already!)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

Obviously.


19 posted on 11/19/2025 6:32:21 PM PST by No name given ( Anonymous is who you’ll know me as )
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Drive pilings and put the cabins 25 feet in the air. Tell the girls it’s because of bears. Everyone’s happy.


20 posted on 11/19/2025 6:43:37 PM PST by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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