Camp Mystic, flash flood
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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.
The first drops of rain had yet to fall when Ainslie Bashara, a counselor at Camp Mystic, noticed that one of the younger girls had begun to tear up. They were walking back to their cabin, Giggle Box, as another storm swelled over the Texas Hill Country. The girl feared what was coming, so Ainslie wrapped an arm around her.
Camp Mystic, the summer haven torn apart by a deadly flood, has been a getaway for girls to make lifelong friends and find “ways to grow spiritually.”
Search and recovery teams are also looking for a missing camp counselor who hasn't been seen since the July Fourth flooding catastrophe.
The death toll from Friday morning’s horrific flooding rose to at least 80 across Texas on Sunday evening, with 68 of the deaths in Kerr County, where Camp Mystic is based.
Many Catholics in the region have been stepping up to help, converging on Notre Dame Parish in Kerrville, located in the hardest-hit community along the Guadalupe River.
With more than 170 still missing, communities must reconcile how to pick up the pieces around a waterway that remains both a wellspring and a looming menace.
Texas inspectors verified that Camp Mystic had a written emergency plan just two days before the devastating flood killed more than two dozen people at the all-girls Christian summer camp, most of them children.