The July 4 tragedy at Camp Mystic outside of Hunt, Texas, was concentrated at just two cabins where Mystic’s youngest campers bunked and where a confluence of rising water from the river and a normally quiet creek swallowed the buildings before the girls could escape.
Of the camp’s 28 deaths, 15, including two teenage counselors, were at a cabin known as Bubble Inn, where no one survived, according to a new accounting of the fatalities by the camp. Eleven of the other girls who died had been in the cabin called Twins, a pair of adjoining buildings, said Jeff Carr, a Camp Mystic spokesman.
Another fatality was the camp’s longtime director, Dick Eastland, who died trying to rescue campers from Bubble Inn. Only one death at the camp — a camper from a nearby cabin called Jumble House — was unconnected to Bubble Inn or Twins.
The new accounting underscores how focused the raging waters were at the nearly 100-year-old Christian retreat in the Texas Hill Country. The two beige stone cabins were enveloped by floodwaters that pushed in from opposite directions in the pre-dawn darkness, probably spawning eddies, trapping campers and confusing anyone who tried to save them from the swirling pools, experts say.
A dozen Twins campers and their four counselors survived, Mr. Carr said. But most of the 8- and 9-year-olds in the two cabins, nestled among pecan and live oak trees, did not.
Cypress Creek
CAMP MYSTIC
Twins
Bubble Inn
Cypress Creek
CAMP MYSTIC
Twins
Bubble Inn
Aerial imagery by Carter Johnston for The New York Times
Guadalupe River
Estimated flood depth
8+ feet
Twins
Bubble Inn
CAMP
MYSTIC
Cypress Creek
4 to 8 ft.
2 to 4 ft.
Guadalupe River
Bubble
Inn
Estimated
flood depth
8+ feet
Twins
Cypress Creek
4 to 8 ft.
CAMP
MYSTIC
2 to 4 ft.
Sources: ICEYE flood analysis as of July 10; Aerial image via Vexcel Imaging
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