A long day on the stand for Camp Mystic, here are takeaways from Monday’s hearing

A Travis County district court heard nearly five hours of testimony Monday in the first of three days of evidentiary hearings in the wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the deaths of 28 people at Camp Mystic during the July 4, 2025, Guadalupe River flood. Camp Mystic director Edward Eastland spent the entire day on the stand under direct examination by plaintiffs’ attorney Brad Beckworth. The defense has not yet had the opportunity to present its case. Here is what we learned on Monday.

1. The camp publicly claimed it received no warning. That was false. Defense attorney Mikal Watts told the press after the March injunction hearing that Camp Mystic “didn’t get a warning” before the flood. Edward Eastland admitted under oath Monday that he received a National Weather Service Flash Flood Warning directly to his cell phone at 1:14 a.m.

2. One night watchman was left in charge of more than 500 children. When camp leadership went to sleep on the night of July 3, a single night watchman was the only adult actively monitoring more than 500 children spread across more than 100 acres. Counselors returning from nights off in Kerrville warned the camp’s senior office assistants at 12:40 a.m. that it was raining so hard they had been scared to drive. That warning was never passed to the sleeping directors.

3. The first priority was moving canoes, not evacuating children. Eastland was woken at 1:45 a.m. — not to begin an evacuation, but to move canoes and waterfront equipment to a soccer field. By the time he reached the main office, the land bridge was already overflowing, cutting off more than 150 girls on Senior Hill. No camp director or staff member attempted to contact those stranded children for more than three hours.

4. The camp had no written evacuation plan. Eastland admitted Camp Mystic had no written evacuation plan — a violation of the Texas Administrative Code. The only plan was an informal one in his father’s head based on a 1987 flood. The only written instruction given to cabin counselors was to stay in their cabins. The lives saved that night, Eastland conceded, were the result of teenage counselors who ignored that directive and acted on their own.

5. The loudspeaker was never used, and Eastland admitted it could have saved everyone. Photographic and video evidence established that the camp had standard electrical power — and a fully operational loudspeaker system — until at least 3:46 a.m. Eastland admitted under oath that he could have used it to order a camp-wide evacuation to higher ground at any point during the crisis, and that if he had done so, the 27 people who died would still be alive.

6. No Eastland family member called 911. From 1:14 a.m. to 4:15 a.m., not a single camp director or member of the Eastland family called 911. The only emergency calls came from the camp’s Polish seasonal kitchen workers, who called at 4:08 a.m. after finding themselves trapped by rising water with no guidance from camp leadership, and from a handful of girls who had secretly kept cell phones.

7. The director does not know what happened to Cile Steward. When Beckworth asked Eastland directly what happened to Cile Steward — the daughter of plaintiffs Will and CiCi Steward of Austin — Eastland replied: “I don’t know.” He could not confirm whether Cile was the child clinging to his back when he was swept from the Twins 2 cabin into the flood, could not remember seeing her in the tree where survivors clung until dawn, and could not recall what she was wearing. Cile’s body has not been recovered. Search and recovery efforts remain ongoing in Ingram and Kerrville.

Day 2 of the hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. The defense has not yet had the opportunity to present its case or cross-examine witnesses. Camp Mystic has maintained that the July 4 storm was an unprecedented event that could not have been anticipated, and that the camp’s actions during the crisis should be understood in that context.