Jackals from Hell reference in the final paragraph. It’s not the title of the piece.
By Kimberly Crouch
Hunt, Texas.
I am heartbroken that Camp Mystic will not open its gates this summer. It is especially tragic for the 800 girls and young women who had looked forward to returning to their beloved and sacred place to mourn, accept and grow into their grief surrounded by their similarly suffering friends.
I was once one of those campers. Camp Mystic has long been important to my family: My sisters, my niece and I shared a total of 44 years of Camp Mystic experience.
And better than most families, we understand the alacrity and horrific power of the July 4 flood. One of my sisters and my niece also lost their lives that night — not at Camp Mystic, but at the vacation home my parents built in 1976, three miles downriver from Camp Mystic’s site on the Guadalupe.
I understand why the camp’s owners, the Eastland family, decided not to reopen this year. Sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor. But I am deeply saddened by how their situation became untenable even for the brave and true of heart.
I blame grandstanding Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and his pandering minions at the Texas State Legislature for this tragedy piled on tragedy.
The fact is, the directors of Camp Mystic did an amazing job in the chaotic early-morning hours of July 4. No rational individual could have predicted or planned for the speed and size of the flood. The water rose an incredible 40 feet, probably more in places — flooding land far outside the 100-year flood plain.
Authorities didn’t send a truly urgent-sounding warning until after 4 a.m. — a full hour after Dick Eastland’s watch stopped working as floodwaters swept away him and his carful of girls
Those of us who live along the banks of the Guadalupe understand its power. My sisters and I knew — or thought we knew — how high the river might go in any potential flood. We were wrong.
The ferocity of the waters on July 4 far exceeded the similar summer floods of 1932, 1978 and 1987. The 2025 flood was beyond the imagination of even the most pessimistic, cautious observer.
The people of Kerr County are not idiots. We do pay attention to flood watches and warnings. But without state support for a sophisticated flood warning system, the system in place endured as it had for generations. It was simple: Folks upriver were to telephone folks downriver as the Guadalupe rose.
Needless to say, we did not get a call from Dick Eastland in the early-morning hours of July 4. He was busy.
Lt. Gov. Patrick blames the Eastlands for not having an evacuation plan. While that charge has merit, Patrick ignores the fact that we river people knew what to do.
At our home we had a flood plan. Of course it wasn’t written down. But even the youngest generation would have known what to do. That plan too was simple and had always proven safe. Move valuables upstairs. Shelter in place on the second floor. In the worst case, escape to the hills across Highway 39. Do not try to drive out of the rising waters in a car.
Even in the very few minutes my niece and her parents had to act, my niece, a former Mystic lifeguard and swimming instructor, had the sense to grab the baby life jackets out of the closet and put them on.
My father built our house well above the floodplain. Subsequent floods rose significantly higher but never rose above our kitchen counters. More than once, as water was rising, friends and neighbors helped us move furniture — including the refrigerator — to safety on the second floor.
In previous floods, there was time to pull canoes and kayaks off the banks, time to move valuables and furniture upstairs. There was time to react.
But not in July 2025. In a matter of minutes the floodwaters forced open the bolted front door. Rushing water crested over the house with such force that it was swept off its foundation, taking my niece and my sister with it.
I share these details to emphasize how quickly the Eastland family of Camp Mystic must have reacted to save as many of the children and counselors as they did. First, they successfully moved campers from the lowest-lying cabins. The cabins that held the campers and counselors who were killed were on higher ground, as was the two-story structure where evacuated campers gathered.
Could the scenarios have played out differently and all the lives have been saved? Sure.
Had the state funded the warning system that Kerr County needed, would more than a hundred people killed in the flood still be alive? Probably.
But Dan Patrick chooses to blame the Eastlands and Camp Mystic.
Camp Mystic-Cypress Lake, the only camp Eastlands planned to open, is in a different location than Camp Mystic-Guadalupe, where 28 people, including Dick Eastland, lost their lives. Mystic-Cypress Lake incurred no structural damage in the flood. Its location is well above the new flood plain. And advanced warning systems have now been installed.
Camp Mystic-Cypress Lake did what the state licensing board had asked, and it was continuing to work to meet additional requirements. License or no, the fact remains that at least 800 families trusted the Eastlands enough to want their daughters to return to the camp this summer.
The parents and families of those young women have much more at stake than the State of Texas or the grandstanding state legislators who claimed the moral high ground. Does anyone honestly believe any parent would willingly put their child in danger?
I have deep sympathy for the parents who lost their beloved children. They are grieving not only the daughters who were killed, but the young women they would have become.
But it only compounds the tragedy to assuage those parents’ pain by closing the camp this summer, keeping other parents from choosing what they believe is best for their daughters. The lieutenant governor says that he supports parental choice when it comes to schooling and textbooks. Why doesn’t that extend to letting parents choose a summer camp?
Patrick’s constant harping on Camp Mystic draws attention away from the other lives lost on the Guadalupe, and whether Texas could have done more to save them. Every life had value. Every survivor deserves answers regarding the warning systems that were clearly insufficient. And area residents must be sure that improvements to that warning system can prevent future climate-change-driven catastrophes.
I grieve for Camp Mystic, and I grieve for all of us, including the families of Heaven’s 27, the Mystic girls killed in the July 4 flood. But I fear that the bone the Eastlands have thrown to Patrick and the other posturing legislators will not be enough to appease them. After all, the jackals of hell are rarely satisfied with a paltry meal.