Bubble Inn saw generations of 8-year-olds enter as strangers and emerge as confident young ladies equipped with new skills from the great outdoors and lifelong friends – bonds that would one day prove vital in the face of unfathomable tragedy.

At least 19 of the cabins at Camp Mystic were located in designated flood zones, including some in an area deemed “extremely hazardous” by the county.

Amid chaos from the flood, campers huddled with young counselors—many unaware of the devastation just yards away.

For decades, Dick and Tweety Eastland presided over Camp Mystic with a kind of magisterial benevolence that alumni well past childhood still describe with awe.

Federal regulators repeatedly granted appeals to remove Camp Mystic’s buildings from their 100-year flood map, loosening oversight as the camp operated and expanded in a dangerous flood plain in the years before rushing waters swept away children and counselors,

"Their focus is fighting through that grief to stay connected with the families of their campers and helping them in any way they can," a camp spokesperson says

Dick Eastland, the Camp Mystic owner who pushed for flood alerts on the Guadalupe River, was killed in last week’s deadly surge.

Controversy erupted after a fundraiser for Sade Perkins, a former Houston official who made racial comments about the 27 girls who died in Camp Mystic floods.