Search and recovery workers dig through debris looking for any survivors or remains of people swept up in the flash flooding near Camp Mystic on July 6 in Hunt, Texas. Photo / Getty Images
Eight-year-olds Sarah Marsh and Renee Smajstrla, with hundreds of other girls, descended on Camp Mystic, ready to fish, play games, exchange bracelets, and make lifelong friendships.
They were nestled among the oak and cypress trees in Texas Hill Country on Friday, when torrential rain raised the Guadalupe River and floodwater swept through the nearly century-old camp.
With it came death, devastation, and destruction at a place that generations of campers have held dear every northern summer, decade after decade.
As of today NZT, the central Texas flood has killed nearly 80 people, including at least 28 children – Marsh and Smajstrla among them.
At least 68 of the people who died in the flood were in Kerr County, where Mystic is.
The flood also left two beloved camp directors dead, one of Camp Mystic and another of the nearby Heart O’ the Hills.
As rescuers continued their search through the flood wreckage, muddied cabins and downed trees, 11 Mystic girls and one counsellor were still missing.
A total of 41 people in the state remained unaccounted for after the flood, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.
The tragedy shattered the beloved, once-serene scene of summer camp in Texas Hill Country, leaving hundreds of people across the country taking stock of what was lost.
In a Facebook post Friday, Smajstrla’s uncle, Shawn Salta, shared a photo of the 8-year-old from the previous day at camp, wearing a hot pink top and a wide smile on her face.
“We are thankful she was with her friends and having the time of her life, as evidenced by this picture from yesterday,” Salta wrote. “She will forever be living her best life at Camp Mystic.”
Hour by hour, the names of more children who died in the United States flood over the weekend were revealed: Janie Hunt, a 9-year-old whose mother described as “brave and sweet”; Blair and Brooke Harber, sisters who attended a Catholic school in Dallas; Linnie McCown, an 8-year-old whose father drove to Mystic to try to find her himself.
Roughly 200 parishioners gathered at the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, which lost one of its members to the floods, Jane Ragsdale, the 68-year-old director and co-owner of the Heart O’ the Hills camp.
She had spent her entire life at the camp, which was her family’s business. She climbed from junior counsellor to counsellor before becoming director about 25 years ago. The camp was in between sessions this week.
Jack Haberer, retired pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, said Ragsdale served on the board of elders, focusing on missions, and sang in the church choir.
“She was the one that lit up the room when she walked in. An effervescent personality,” Haberer said. “Always a positive word, an encouraging word; always building people up.”
Inside Ragsdale’s church Sunday morning, the service began with “Hymns of Comfort” and a long silence.
The readings included Psalm 23, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me”.
The pastor giving the children’s message told the young faces before her, “It’s okay to be angry about what’s happened. It’s okay to be really scared. It’s okay to be terribly sad.”
Reverend Jasiel Hernandez Garcia said he, too, had struggled to find the right words amid such ongoing tragedy.
“We lost extraordinary people, like our beloved Jane Ragsdale … Our hearts ache for all the children and people who have not been found as of this morning,” Garcia said.
“Our hearts ache for all the damage done to our community. Our hearts ache because we love.”
To those who knew Richard “Dick” Eastland, the co-owner and co-executive director of Camp Mystic, it was no surprise that he was found alongside three girls he had tried to save from the rising water.
“He died trying to save Mystic girls,” said Cami Wright, 57, who attended the camp and later served as a counsellor. “That was his whole life.”
Eastland was the third generation of his family to manage Mystic. Though he’d worked at the camp for decades, he remembered every camper’s name, Wright recalled.
He taught campers how to fish, build fires, and fold a flag, she said. On Sundays, he led the service at Chapel Hill, a site overlooking the camp.
“He was like a father to thousands of little girls,” Wright said.
Before he was found, Eastland had been trying to rescue the campers in the Bubble Inn cabin, which sat about 150m from the river’s edge. But the water, which came from the Guadalupe River in one direction and from a nearby creek in the other, came too fast.
“It made like a swirl right around those cabins like a toilet bowl,” said Craig Althaus, who worked on the property for 25 years.
Eastland died in a helicopter on the way to a Houston hospital, according to Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly, who said he was in men’s Bible study with Eastland.
Like him, others confirmed to have died had been trying to save their loved ones as the water rose, quick and high.
Julian Ryan had been at his Ingram home with his children and mother-in-law early Friday when floodwaters poured into the house, his fiancee told Houston television station KHOU.
Christinia Wilson said Ryan punched through a window to help get his family to safety, causing severe bleeding along his arm. His body was recovered hours later, after waters had receded.
“He died a hero, and that will never go unnoticed,” Connie Salas, Ryan’s sister, told KHOU. A friend, Kris Roberts, told the station that he was “the kindest person” Roberts had ever met.
“I’ll forever love him no matter what,” Roberts said.
At Mystic, Sundays had always been riddled with traditions, including wearing white and praying at Chapel Hill, said Wright, who wore white herself to honour the victims, as did many alumni of Mystic who have been sharing updates among one another.
Sundays were also the day campers got to eat fried chicken, but only after they completed their “chicken letters” – written messages to friends or family back home.
Wright said she had heard that a friend of a friend had lost her daughter, who had been staying in Bubble Inn.
Days earlier, the parent had received what Wright said was probably a chicken letter from their daughter: a last message from Mystic.