Camp Mystic where 25 young girls were tragically swept to their death in disastrous Texas floods files for bankruptcy
The Texas summer camp where 25 little girls perished in a flood has filed for bankruptcy.
The owners of Camp Mystic, Mary Liz and Edward Eastland, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday, The New York Times reported.
The Eastland family said the summer camp’s debt exceeded $10 million, while their assets were only between $1 million and $10 million.
Camp Mystic, which will remain permanently closed, saw 25 of its campers, two staff members, and an executive lose their lives last summer after a devastating flood wiped out the camp, which is located along a river.
The girls’ camp has faced scrutiny after the tragedy, as it was ill-planned to accommodate such an emergency.
Mary Liz also saw her nursing license stripped after the July 4, 2025, tragedy, as the Texas Board of Nursing found she had abandoned campers when the site began to flood.
The board found that she evacuated ‘herself and her children to higher ground without providing any assistance or direction to all of the other campers and staff.’
The order also faults Mary Liz for failing to develop and maintain adequate emergency plans and training protocols before the deadly floods, and failing to keep adequate shelter and evacuation protocols.
The owners of Camp Mystic, Mary Liz and Edward Eastland, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday
The court filings came nearly a year after the deadly flood took the lives of 25 campers and destroyed the camp
The camp after the flood. The Eastland family said the summer camp’s debt exceeded $10 million, while their assets were only between $1 million and $10 million
Edward had previously admitted that more campers likely would have survived if he and his father, camp co-owner Richard Eastland, as well as the camp safety director, made quicker decisions to evacuate, the Texas Tribune reports.
Instead, Edward said he slept through a CodeRED text alert sent out on July 3 warning about the dangerous flash floods that were expected to last several hours.
He finally woke up when his father called him on his walkie-talkie shortly before 2am to tell him rain was falling hard and they needed to move the canoes and water equipment off the waterfront.
Yet they still opted not to evacuate the cabins at that point.
‘It was not reasonable to do that at the time,’ Edward said. ‘The water wasn’t out of the Guadalupe River. It was pouring down rain and lightning, and the cabins were safe at the time.’
But soon, the surging water raised the river from 14 feet to 29.5 feet in just an hour.
The Texas Department of State Health Services told the Eastland family in April that its emergency plan – submitted under an application for a license renewal – was insufficient under new rules for a youth camp.
In the aftermath, Camp Mystic announced that it had canceled its bid for an operating license to reopen portions of the camp for Summer 2026.
Lila Bonner was one of the campers who died in the flood
Mary Liz and Edward Eastland filed for bankruptcy in Texas
‘No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy,’ the camp said in a statement to the Texas Tribune.
Lila Bonner’s parents, Blake and Caitlin, were outraged at the possibility of Camp Mystic partially reopening to a reported 850 campers.
‘I cannot fathom inviting hundreds of children to play in or around an active crime scene where 27 girls died just a year before,’ Blake told the Daily Mail in April.
‘You say that out loud and it’s crazy.’
More than 20 families of the lost girls – poignantly dubbed Heaven’s 27 – are suing the Eastlands, accusing them of gross negligence.
‘This tragedy, clear as day, it is complacency, the failure to act and the failure to plan,’ Bonner said. ‘That management team was directly responsible for those children, and they lost 27 lives.
‘It’s unfathomable to me that they would be entrusted with more children.’
A memorial collage shows the faces and names of the 27 girls who were killed last summer at Camp Mystic
The disaster returned to the spotlight in April after a three-day hearing linked to a lawsuit filed by Will and CiCi Steward, the parents of eight-year-old camper Cile, whose body is yet to be found.
During the hearings, camp bosses made a string of astounding admissions, including that they missed official flood warnings, did not have a detailed written evacuation plan, and that lives could have been saved had staff acted sooner.
The explosive hearings in Austin heard those who survived only did so because teenage counselors ignored the camp’s directive to stay inside cabins.
Bonner said despite the pain of the revelations, camp directors’ accounts confirmed what families have known for some time.
‘And that is, the camp failed the youngest, most vulnerable campers and the only girls that survived that night basically didn’t follow the stay in place order.
‘I hate the fact that I – and I think the other parents would say the same – am now subject matter experts on camp safety and what was required of the law.’
The emotional hearings ended with a judge siding with the Stewards and renewing an injunction blocking the Eastlands from touching the site where the little girls lost their lives.
The Eastlands appealed.
The all-girls Christian summer camp has welcomed the daughters of Texas’ most influential and wealthy families for almost 100 years, teaching them skills such as fishing and canoeing.
Its elite clientele has included future first lady Laura Bush, who served as a Mystic counselor before she married George W Bush, and the daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of President Lyndon Johnson.
