Camp Mystic Files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy After 28 Deaths, Debt Exceeds $10 Million

Camp Mystic Files for Bankruptcy, Nearly a Year After 28 Died

Camp Mystic filed a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition on Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. The filing covers four affiliated entities: Camp Mystic, LLC; Natural Fountains Properties, Inc.; Mystic Camps Family Partnership, Ltd.; and Mystic Camps Management, LLC, according to federal court records reported by FOX 4 News.

Debt exceeds $10 million. Assets are listed between $100,001 and $500,000. The camp is not closing, at least not formally. Chapter 11 is a reorganization, not a liquidation, but with that asset-to-debt ratio, creditors are going to be waiting a long time.

What Happened on July 4, 2025

The Guadalupe River surged catastrophically on July 4, 2025, killing at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch, according to KSAT. The flood hit Camp Mystic hardest. Twenty-five girls and two teenage counselors were killed. Camp owner and longtime director Dick Eastland also died when the SUV he was driving during an attempted emergency evacuation was swept away by the river, according to FOX 4 News.

All told, 28 people connected to the camp died. The Guardian and KSAT report slightly different breakdowns—The Guardian citing 25 campers, two teenage counselors, and Eastland—but the total of 28 is consistent across sources.

The State Report and Its Findings

Less than a week before the bankruptcy filing, a joint committee of the Texas Legislature released a 115-page investigative report on the disaster. FOX 4 News reported the findings in detail: camp leadership had no state-compliant written emergency plans, failed to respond to hours of advance storm alerts, and confiscated counselors' cell phones without providing any backup radio communications.

The Guardian added another finding: at least 39 adults were present at camp that day who could have been tasked to help with an orderly evacuation, but there was no plan for them and no training that would have prepared them. This was an organizational failure, not a freak-of-nature problem.

Camp Mystic withdrew its application for a 2026 operating license in April, according to FOX 4 News, following pressure from lawmakers. It also halted plans to reopen this summer amid outrage from victims' families, according to KSAT.

The Lawsuits

Multiple wrongful death and negligence suits have been filed against the camp and the Eastland family. Families began filing in November 2025, according to KSAT. One lawsuit, cited by The Guardian, was filed on behalf of the families of five campers and two counselors. It accuses Camp Mystic of putting "profit over safety" and of housing campers in flood-prone cabins to "avoid the cost" of moving them to safer ground.

A Travis County district judge ordered in March that the camp preserve all flood-damaged areas along the Guadalupe River as evidence, blocking demolition or reconstruction while civil litigation continues, according to FOX 4 News.

The Camp's Defense

The strongest argument for Camp Mystic's position is this: the July 4 flood was catastrophic by any measure. At least 136 people died across the river corridor, not just at the camp. The Guadalupe River flooded at a scale that overwhelmed an entire region. Camp Mystic's attorney stated last year, according to The Guardian, that the flood surge "far exceeded any previous flood in the area by several magnitudes, that it was unexpected and that no adequate warning systems existed in the area." Eastland himself died trying to evacuate people. These are not the actions of someone who was indifferent.

That defense becomes harder to sustain against the specific findings in the legislative report: advance storm alerts were available for hours before the surge hit. The cell phone confiscation—a common camp policy under normal circumstances—eliminated a critical communication layer with no substitute in place. A reasonable argument that the flood was unprecedented is not the same as a reasonable argument that no warning existed or that protocols were adequate.

What the Bankruptcy Means for Families

Chapter 11 reorganization typically freezes civil litigation, or at minimum complicates it, by running claims through the bankruptcy court rather than state courts. Families face this as an immediate legal consequence. Their wrongful death suits, filed in state court, may now be subject to the bankruptcy proceeding's creditor claim process, which moves slower and often pays less than a jury verdict.

AP News and KSAT both reported the core bankruptcy filing details but did not address that litigation-freeze dynamic. FOX 4 News provided the most granular account of the four affiliated entities named in the filing and the specific findings of the Texas legislative report, making it the most comprehensive single-source treatment of the bankruptcy's context.

The unresolved question as of June 24, 2026: whether the bankruptcy court will allow the pending civil wrongful death suits to proceed separately or require families to file claims as general unsecured creditors. Given the camp's listed assets of under $500,000 against $10 million-plus in debt, the latter would almost certainly leave most families with cents on the dollar.