Camp Mystic files for bankruptcy after deadly Texas flood

Camp Mystic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, listing more than $10 million in debt and assets of roughly $100,001 to $500,000. The filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas immediately put pending lawsuits against the camp on hold, shifting the legal fight over the Texas Hill Country disaster into bankruptcy court.

The move comes after the Christian all-girls sleepaway camp along the Guadalupe River said in April 2026 that it would not reopen for summer 2026 and withdrew its camp-license application with the Texas Department of State Health Services. For the families of the dead, the bankruptcy is now part of the collision between grief and the slow machinery of liability, where the question is no longer only what happened on the riverbank but who will pay for it and from what remaining assets.

The July 4, 2025 flood killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors at Camp Mystic. Dick Eastland, the camp’s longtime director and co-owner, also died in the disaster. The flood became one of the deadliest camp tragedies in recent memory, and the legal fallout has widened as families pursued wrongful-death claims. By November 2025, at least 20 families had joined litigation, and more than a dozen families had sued the camp.

A Texas legislative investigative report released days before the bankruptcy found that Camp Mystic failed to plan, prepare and adequately respond to the flood. Investigators said the camp did not have a written emergency plan that met state requirements. That finding gives the lawsuits and the bankruptcy filing a sharper edge: Chapter 11 can offer a path to marshal remaining assets, but it can also slow discovery and delay courtroom pressure as the camp’s finances are sorted out.

The numbers in the bankruptcy papers underscore how little remains relative to the damage. A camp that once sat at the center of family summers in Hunt, Texas, now enters a federal process designed to reorganize debt, protect assets and determine whether any future for Camp Mystic exists at all.