Camp Mystic official says he didn’t see flood warnings issued the day before storm hit

AUSTIN, TX — The director of a summer camp in Texas, where 27 campers and counselors were killed by a devastating flood in 2025, testified Monday that he saw no official warnings issued the day before the storm struck, that staff did not hold meetings about the impending danger and that they did not call for evacuation until it was too late.

Over several hours of sometimes emotional testimony at a court hearing packed with families of campers who were killed, Edward Eastland gave the most detailed description yet of how camp staff responded or did not respond when floodwaters along the Guadalupe River quickly rose to historic levels, trapping children and counselors in cabins before they were swept away on the early morning of the Fourth of July.

“I wish we hadn’t had camp that summer,” Eastland said toward the end of his testimony. He acknowledged that lives could have been saved if camp staff had moved sooner, but insisted they could not have predicted the severity of the storm.

This week’s hearing comes during a legal battle between the camp’s owners and families of the victims, who have filed multiple lawsuits and demands from the families to preserve damage to the camp site as evidence.

This comes as Camp Mystic plans to reopen in less than two months. The camp has applied to state regulators to renew its license so it can open in an elevated area that has not been flooded. Camp organizers said that nearly 900 girls had registered to attend.

Eastland acknowledged that the camp did not have a detailed written flood evacuation plan. He also said more campers could have survived if he and his father, camp co-owner Richard Eastland, as well as the camp’s safety director, had made quicker decisions to evacuate.

By the time they did, the water was so high and so fast that it was producing rapids that ran around some of the cabins, he said.

Eastland also acknowledged that staff did not use simple procedures such as using campus loudspeakers to tell campers and counselors to leave their cabins and get to higher ground early in the storm.

Sissy Steward, whose 8-year-old daughter Celie is the only victim still missing from the camp, said after testimony that the state should deny the camp a license.

“They are clearly unable to keep the children safe,” Sissy Steward said.

Eastland’s attorney, Mikal Watts, declined to comment immediately after the hearing.

Missed warnings and missed opportunities to evacuate

Eastland said he and other employees signed up for an emergency warning system on their phones and used other weather apps. But he said he did not see social media posts for flood watches by the National Weather Service and the Texas Department of Emergency Management on July 2 and 3.

Eastland said he believed the local CodeRED mobile alert system and phone weather app staff at the time “were sufficient.”

The National Weather Service’s July 3 alert asked area broadcasters to note that locally heavy rainfall could cause flash flooding in rivers, creeks, creeks and low-lying areas, all features of the Camp Mystic property.

Eastland said his father usually kept an eye out for weather issues and that he didn’t think camp staff had a meeting about alerts and warnings that day.

Storms would hit in the overnight hours, killing 25 campers, two teenage counselors and Richard Eastland, who had loaded his large SUV with the campers before the vehicle was swept away. No one survived.

“We didn’t expect what would happen,” Edward Eastland said.

“You’ve been warned,” said Brad Beckworth, the attorney representing Steward’s family.

Eastland says the campus loudspeakers were not used to issue a weather warning

The courtroom heard part of a video played over speakers when the camp participants went to bed at about 10pm on July 3.

Eastland said he went to bed around 11 p.m. and never received a flash flood warning from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. He said he fell asleep through the text of a CodeRED alert at the same time that warned of flooding that could last several hours.

His father called him via walkie-talkie shortly before 2 a.m. to tell him about heavy rain and the need to move canoes and water equipment away from the river bank. They did not move to evacuate the cabins at that point.

“It didn’t make sense to do that at the time,” Eastland said. “The water wasn’t coming out of the Guadalupe River. It was raining and lightning and the cabins were safe at that time.”

Richard Eastland made the call to evacuate the cabins at about 3 a.m., Edward Eastland said.

The families’ lawyers submitted a statement signed by a counselor in which he described the horrors of the night. She woke up during the storm and saw the girls running for shelter.

“The water was rising faster than anything I had ever seen,” the consultant wrote. She said Edward Eastland eventually approached the cabin, which was knee-deep in water, and told her it was too late to leave and they had to weather the storm there.

The counselor said she tried to keep the children away from the rushing water before she was eventually swept away.

Eastland also described tearfully trying to catch two girls and a third who jumped on his back while he stood bracing in the cabin doorway before they were washed away. In the end, he and his advisor were pushed into a tree.

“The water was over my head so fast. The water was churning,” Eastland said.

At one point, several family members left the courtroom during a cellphone video taken the night of the flood. Someone can be heard shouting “Help!” In the background.

Flooding killed at least 136 people along the Guadalupe River

In all, devastating floods killed at least 136 people along several miles of river, raising questions about how things could have gone so wrong.

Texas health regulators said last week they were investigating hundreds of complaints against camp owners. The Texas Rangers are also helping look into negligence allegations, according to the Texas Department of Safety, although the scope of the state’s elite investigative unit was not immediately clear.

The hearing is scheduled to continue on Tuesday.