July 14, 2025: News on the deadly Texas floods

Camp Mystic co-director Richard “Dick” Eastland received an alert about “life threatening flash flooding” on his phone around 1:14 a.m. July 4, about an hour before he started evacuating young campers, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The National Weather Service’s alert warned of “life threatening flash flooding” in Texas’ Kerr County — where the all-girls camp is in a flood zone. The alert did not include an evacuation order.

Eastland, who ran Camp Mystic for decades along with his wife, “started to assess immediately himself after (the) warning and, in the process, contacted family by walkie talkie,” Eastland family spokesperson Jeff Carr told CNN on Monday.

Carr said the relocation of campers to the recreation hall started between 2 and 2:30 a.m., based on observations of the river conditions. “But there was no information available concerning the magnitude of what was coming,” he said.

“Camp leaders promptly responded to alerts as they have always known to do based on the information available to them,” Carr told CNN.

After those evacuations began, the National Weather Service issued a more dire warning for Kerr County at 4:03 a.m.: “Move to higher ground now! This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation,” the alert said.

Eastland died while trying to rescue girls from Bubble Inn, a cabin near the Guadalupe River that housed many of the camp’s youngest girls.

A total of 27 Camp Mystic campers and counselors died. As of Monday morning, two girls remained unaccounted for, Carr told CNN.

The fact that Eastland received the 1:14 a.m. flood warning around is notable, as many others in Kerr County said they never got that same early morning alert.

Last week, Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring told CNN he didn’t get the alert on his phone. When asked if he was concerned by that, the mayor responded, “Yes, of course it does.”