Several families of the campers and staff killed during deadly flooding that wiped out a portion of Camp Mystic in Texas are suing the owners of the camp, accusing them of gross negligence.
Three lawsuits were filed this week by families of seven campers and two counselors who lost their lives in the July 4th destruction, CNN reported.
One lawsuit was filed by five campers’ families and the two counselors who died: Anna Margaret Bellows, Lila Bonner, Chloe Childress, Molly DeWitt, Katherine Ferruzzo, Lainey Landry and Blakely McCrory.
The second was filed by the parents of Eloise “Lulu Peck while the third was filed by the family of Ellen Getten.
The lawsuits say that Dick Eastland, the camp’s executive director, and his son Edward did not heed warnings of “life threatening flash flooding” issued by the National Weather Service and ignored camp counselors’ requests for help. They then “made a hopeless ‘rescue’ effort from its self-created disaster” when it was too late.
Dick Eastland was killed during the rescue.
The Guadalupe River rose from 3 feet to nearly 30 feet in 45 minutes, CNN reported.
Two Camp Mystic counselors and 25 girls were killed in the flooding when water rushed into cabins perched alongside the river and housing the youngest campers, The New York Times reported.
“These young girls died because a for-profit camp put profit over safety,” one of the lawsuits says, according to CNN. “The Camp chose to house young girls in cabins sitting in flood-prone areas, despite the risk, to avoid the cost of relocating the cabins. The Camp chose not to make plans to safely evacuate its campers and counselors from those cabins, despite state rules requiring evacuation plans, and not to spend time and money on safety training and tools.”
The lawsuit filed by Peck’s family said that there was inadequate emergency planning, the Times reported.
The camp’s attorney said in a statement that they empathize with the families but disagree with “several accusations and misinformation” in the suits, The Associated Press reported.
“We intend to demonstrate and prove that this sudden surge of floodwaters 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,” Camp Mystic legal counsel Jeff Ray told the AP.
Earlier camp attorney Mikal Watts said in the past that the camp evacuation was “orderly” and was mostly successful, the newspaper said.
He said that Dick Eastland met with the camp’s night security guard “within minutes” of the NWS’s flooding alert was issued and that they were later joined by Edward Eastland. The camp’s ground crew gathered equipment and then the group “started coming up with a plan” around 2 a.m. The warning was issued at 1:14 a.m.
The bodies of most of those killed were recovered after the flooding, but one child, Cile Steward, still has not been found.
Each case is seeking more than $1 million in damages.
The camp plans to reopen in 2026 for its 100th year of operation, but will use a portion of the property that opened in 2020. The area where the deadly flooding happened will not be used next year, the Times reported.
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