Thunder and lighting came to the Mystic camp first, but that was normal.
The storm and driving rain at the Texas camp woke up some of the campists, including Georgia and Eloise Jones, around 1 in the morning of July 4.
At first, the couple didn’t think about anything, they told ABC News. After all, I had been raining for days.
“I mean, it rains a lot there, so we thought it was simply normal,” Georgia said.
Georgia and Eloise Jones, who were in Camp Mystic, in Texas Hill Country, on July 4, 2025, speak with ABC News about the morning that began the devastating floods.
ABC News
But within an hour or so, the girls knew that something was wrong, they said, when the campers of another cabin appeared at their door, saying that theirs had been flooded.
“That’s when we realized that something was wrong,” Georgia said. “And our cabins are high, and so that they flood, it’s like, you know, something is wrong.”
Hours later, at approximately 7 am, when they left their cabin, the sisters could see what they described as the “complete destruction” from the camp.
“And then we realized as if we couldn’t stay here, you know,” Georgia said.
The flood charged at least 27 lives in Mystic, according to local and camp officials.
A woman classifies the clothes and belongings of the campers outside the Cabañas in Camp Mystic along the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas, on July 8, 2025, after serious sudden floods during the weekend of the holidays of July 4.
Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP through Getty Images
Two days before the floods, the health services of the Texas State Department signed the emergency plans of the Youth Camp, according to the records obtained by ABC News. The details of the Camp Mystic emergency plans were not included in the records published by the State.
The youth camp had 557 campers and 108 employees among their locations in Guadalupe and Cypress Lake at the time of inspection.
Laura Romero of ABC News contributed to this report.
