Camp Mystic says it won't reopen Texas camp this summer

Working a senior level director position at summer camps for over a decade, it is sickening to read how low the bar is for texas state approval and that the camp was not ACA certified. This tragedy could have been avoided in so many ways. The American Camp Association can sometimes feel like the no fun fun police and their requirements can "overreach" at times but I would NEVER send anyone I know to a camp that wasn't certified by them.

Those USGS streamgaging stations warned everyone. They were real time.

Camp mystic should be permanently shut down. 27 girls died last year because of their gross incompetence and these selfish greedy fucks tried their best to reopen this year. Their own lawyer even told the opposition to “burn in hell” (christian camp btw). Edit: Thank you for the awards kind strangers!

They should never reopen. That place should be reclaimed by nature.

Imagine trying to send your kid here after what happened

The fact that it was even on the table is f****** appalling. What the f*** Texas. I nailed a kid with a water balloon a little too hard one year working at a summer camp and it was a big deal. They still haven't found a dead child and someone was trying to load up the bunks again. Do the owners also sell child sized caskets?

Hopefully, it never reopens. That location is too flood prone and their management seems too complacent to be running a summer camp.

I genuinely can’t believe how many people were still enrolling their kids for this summer. I saw a quote recently and I can’t remember the exact words or who it was from but something about how when Americans excused Sandy Hook it was over. I know this isn’t gun violence, but how many American children have to die awful preventable deaths for regulations to change? Are kids dying in horrific (often avoidable) tragedies really something that country is so desensitized to? Why was opening even a thought? Where is the outrage for the kids from the adults around the country? They were so young and had their whole lives ahead of them.

It bothers me that this is the only group of victims that the state of Texas seems concerned about. There were 119 people who lost their lives due to that flood, including other children. The area along the river refused warning sirens that other areas of the hill country use to warn people about floods because they didn’t want to be inconvenienced, they didn’t want to accept money from the Biden administration, and they resented outsiders coming to visit in their area and they felt they had a system that warned those that lived in the area already so they didn’t need anything else. That camp certainly bears a large amount of the blame for the death of their campers, but it wasn’t just them. The civic leaders of that whole community have blood on their hands.

Safety regulations are written in blood.

The county and its residents bear blame here too. Nobody wanted to pay or listen to a warning siren system. https://www.npr.org/2025/07/11/nx-s1-5460863/flood-sirens-texas-warning

The Eastlands and all their supporters have adopted the idea that this was some kind of freak, unavoidable accident. They continue to push this idea and point fingers in any direction but at themselves. The idea this was unavoidable is so far from the truth it's disgusting. There was plenty of warning on the night of the flood that flooding should be expected. They knew those cabins were in the floodWAY, not the flood plain but the floodway. Which is basically the bounds of the river. They knew this because they had asked for waivers or variances so those cabins could remain in place and be used as housing. Something that should never be allowed. If that wasn't bad enough this camp has flooded multiple times before. Locals have described the storms that were moving through the area as being as powerful as any the had seen. You shouldn't need a phone or a siren to tell you those cabins were in peril when know your cabins are in a riverbed and there is torrential downpour going on. However, like any true grifter they hide behind religion and act like this is done as a test or part of a larger piece of god's plan that they just have to endure. No, you ghouls, you did this. Your decisions and action DIRECTLY LED TO THESE DEATHS. Forget opening the camp, you should spend your days in a prison cell where , hopefully at some point, the reality of you killing children will penetrate your thick skulls and you will apologize and show some form of remorse. Until then rot, assholes.

> The camp said it informed the Texas Department of State Health Services on Thursday that it is withdrawing its application for a summer 2026 camp license. Days late. The state already issued a release telling them no. > "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," Camp Mystic said in a statement. They're not fooling anyone. They were told no because another flood would still put kids in danger.

A lawyer for Camp Mystic told a lawyer for one of the bereaved parents that they should "burn in hell." They sound like lovely people.

Good. Those deaths were entirely preventable. It's sick. Those kids died terrified and many of them alone, and one girl was never found.

1 kid is still missing?

I hope they never re-open. They decided to ignore warnings, which led to the loss of workers and camp-goers. Some are still missing so those families don't have their closure yet. And they still decided "Screw writing up our emergency plans to be able to open." They have no regard for life.

I lived in texas and know the kinds of people who can move on from something like this. there was very very little empathy except for immediate neighbors and that was short lived. Wager there are a LOT of parents screaming that this is unfair to their kid because Mystic has been a summer tradition, something like that.

jesus christ....look at what one of the mothers who kid survived said: Liberty Lindley, whose 10-year-old daughter survived the flood, said confronting the experience could be empowering. "Emotionally, that's part of the work: facing the water again, the fears," she told the [Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/04/30/camp-mystic-license-reopen/). "It's so important for them to take their power back."

They should never be allowed to reopen in any location. None of the people involved with bad decisions should ever work in any way with children again . 25 children are dead because of the adults in charge's lack of planning or caring and neglect in passing off their jobs to mere teenagers. 

Who the hell would send their child there?

>The camp’s owner, D*** Eastland, also died in the flooding. Karma rarely, if ever, works this quickly. 

It’s crazy how people are willing to send their kid back there bc it’s tradition !

Any parents who would be willing to send their kids to this camp after it opens back up deserve to lose custody.

It should never reopen, stupidity should not be rewarded. The owners are too stupid to be around children. Just too stupid. For thousands of years people have known that rivers flood, but these owners just decided to ignore that fact, or, they are in fact just grossly stupidi if they knew it could flood and they just ingored the obvious rain. It should not ever be reopend, turn it into a state park, in rememberance.

Close it down forever.

I don’t think they’ve even found all the bodies? Or was that going to be one of the activities, search for the bones of the kids that went there last year?

Who the hell would let their kid go there ever again??

How did they even have this option?

Didn’t Texas return money to Biden Admin because they didn’t want Democrat money for an Early Warning Flash Flood Alarm system? So Texas.

I'm amazed its even considering reopening.

Telling they couldn’t do the minimum required to reopen.

What parent drops their kid off at a camp that had dozens of kids die BECAUSE of the camp incompetence? Gross. Why would you want your child to think about a bunch of kids dying right where they are standing as part of their fun summer camp? Hell kids could find the bodies that haven been located. Damn, Texas has special people. 

How are those Texas parents supposed to send their kids off to their deaths now though?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but one little girl is still missing.

This summer? How about never f****** agian

It shouldn't reopen at all, holy shit

Those grounds have been soured. Tear it down.

Reopening that camp is major league ghoul behavior.

I can’t imagine why a parent would ever send their precious daughter to summer camp there ever again? Should turn that place into some sort of place of remembrance.