Texas camp where 25 girls died in 2025 flood may not be allowed to reopen

Camp Mystic must make several changes, including to its emergency and parent-notification processes, in order to receive its license to operate, according to a letter from the Texas department of state health services.

It has an insufficient emergency warning system, a lack of a floodplain map that shows the locations of camper cabins and a flawed fire evacuation plan, the letter says.

The camp has 45 days in which to rectify these issues in order to obtain its license. A spokesperson for Camp Mystic said it still intends to open for campers on 30 May, as planned.

“Our priority remains the safety and wellbeing of our campers, and we hope to continue the nearly century-long mission and ministry of Camp Mystic to provide a Christian camping experience for girls that allows them to grow physically, mentally and spiritually,” the camp said in a statement on Friday to NBC News.

Camp Mystic has been planning to open a site separate to the one that was hit by the deadly flooding on 4 July 2025.

That day, 25 girls, two counselors and Camp Mystic’s owner were killed at the Kerr county camp site after pounding rainfall caused disastrous flooding along the Guadalupe River, which sits next to the site. In all, more than 130 people in the region died due to the floods.

Some family members of campers who died have criticized the decision to reopen the camp and questioned whether the camp and state authorities had done enough to prevent the tragedy. In February, the families of nine victims of the flood sued the state, alleging it failed to properly demand an evacuation plan from the camp.

Earlier in April, the medical officer for Camp Mystic testified that she had still not officially reported the deaths to the state health agency.

Under Texas administrative code, camps are required to report deaths to state health regulators within 24 hours. But during her testimony during a hearing tied to a lawsuit brought by the family of one of the deceased girls, Cecilia “Cile” Steward, Mary Liz Eastland said she did not do so.

Eastland’s testimony came after that of her husband, Edward Eastland, a camp director whose father – the owner Richard Eastland – was also killed in the flood.

Edward Eastland testified that he had not seen the official weather warnings before the storm, did not convene a staff meeting about the potential flooding and acknowledged that the camp did not have a detailed written flood evacuation plan.

He said that earlier action could have saved lives – but maintained that camp officials could not have anticipated the scale of the storm.