Kerrville, Texas – The Texas parents desperately published photos of their young daughters on social media with inquiries about information, since at least 23 camper from a summer camp of all-girls were not taken into account for Friday after the floods overnight were given by central texas.
At least 27 people, including nine children, are dead after a storm shortly unleash rain shortly before dawn on Friday and flooded from the Guadalupe River through the region known for the centuries-old summer camp. Many more are missing and the authorities said that around 850 people have been saved so far.
State officials said 23 to 25 girls from Camp Mystic, a Christian Camp in River in Hunt, Texas, have not yet been taken into account.
“I ask the people in Texas to seriously pray,” said Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. “On-your-knees prays that we find these young girls.”
Flood transforms the smooth warehouse mystic into a nightmare
The camp was founded in 1926. It was so popular in the following decades that families are now encouraged to bring potential campers to the waiting list years in advance.
Photos and videos that were taken in front of the flood are idyllic and show large cabins with green-mixed roofs and names such as “Wiggle Inn”, which are hidden between stable oaks and cypresses that grow on the banks of the Guadalupe River. In some social media posts fishing girls, ride horses, play kickball or perform choreographed dance routines in suitable T-shirts. Girls between the ages of 8 and 17 pose for the camera with a big smile, arms that drap over the shoulders of their fellow camper.
But the floods have left a very different landscape: a pickup is precarious on two wheels, its side is halfway up a tree. A wall is completely torn down from a building, the interior empty, except for a flag in Texas and paintings that hung high on one side. A twisted piece of metal – maybe a bed frame – is stacked in addition to colorful steamer trunks and broken tree members.
First aiders search the river banks in the hope of finding survivors. Social media contributions are now focusing on the faces of the missing.
More than two dozen children from a girls' warehouse and many others are still missing, while the search and rescue efforts in Texas Hill Country have been continued.
Savers evacuate some campers with helicopters
On Friday afternoon, Texas Game Warders arrived in Camp Mystic and evacuated camper. A rope was bound so that girls could attach when they went over a bridge and the floods hurried around their knees.
Elinor Lester, 13, said she had been evacuated with her helicopter with her cabiner after winning through flood water. She remembered at 1:30 a.m. when thunder cracked and water pressed the cabin windows.
Lester was one of the older girls who were housed on an elevated floor that was known as a senior Hill. Cabins that are the younger campers who can start at the age of 8 are located along the river bank and were the first to flood, she said.
“The camp was completely destroyed,” she said. “It was really scary.”
Her mother, Elizabeth Lester, said her son was near Camp La Junta and also escaped. A consultant there woke up to climb water in the cabin, opened a window and helped the boy swim. Camp La Junta and the nearby Camp Waldemar said in Instagram posts that all campers and employees were safe.
Among the confirmed deaths, the director of another camp was only the road up from Camp Mystic.
Elizabeth Lester sobbed when she saw her daughter, who set a little teddy bear and a book.
“My children are safe, but it is missing that others are still missing to only eat alive,” she said.
In a building in Camp Mystic along the banks of the Guadalupe River, a wall is missing after a flood of falls on Saturday, July 5, 2025, in Hunt, Texas, was swept through the area.
AP Photo/Julio Cortez
Families missing camper worry
In local Facebook groups, dozens of families said that they received devastating telephone calls from security officers who informed them that their daughters were not yet found under the washed camp cabins and dilapidated trees.
Camp Mystic said in an e -mail to the parents of the approximately 750 camper that if they were not directly contacted, your child is taken into account.
On Friday afternoon, more than a hundred people gathered at an Ingram primary school that was used as a reunification center and came as buses full of evacuated after the faces of the relatives. A young girl who was wearing a Camp Mystic T-shirt stood in a puddle in her white socks and sobbed in her mother's arms.
Camp Mystic sits on a strip that is known to the locals as “Sturburflutgasse”.
“When it rains, water does not soak into the ground,” said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, gathering donations. “It hurts down the hill.”
State officials warn the day before of potential fatal weather. The national weather service had predicted 3 to 6 inch rain in the hilly region northwest of San Antonio, but 10 inches fell. The Guadalupe river rose to 26 feet within the early morning within about 45 minutes and immersed its flood tightening, said Patrick.
For decades earlier, floods during the devastating summer storms in 1987 drowned a bus from Camper from another Christian camp along the Guadalupe River from the Guadalupe camp from the pot o 'Gold Christian Camp, after her bus east of Hunt could not evacuate in time.
Happy Camp memories are now colored by grief
Chloe Crane, a teacher and former Camp Mystic Counselor, said her heart broke when one with a teacher shared an e -mail from the warehouse about the missing girls.
“To be honest, I cried because Mystic is such a special place, and I just couldn't imagine which terror I would feel as a consultant to experience it for myself and for 15 little girls that I take care of,” she said. “And it's just sadness as if the camp was there forever and the cabins were literally washed away.”
Crane said the camp was a port for young girls who want to win trust and independence. She remembered happy memories that were taught her campers about journalism, crafts and on a campsite canal race at the end of every summer. Now for many campers and consultants, their lucky place has developed into a horror story, she said.
Schönbaum reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press Writer Rebecca Boone contributed from Boise, Idaho.
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