Between broken tree limbs and muddied cabins, a father looks for his missing child

8 hours ago 4

By Arelis R. Hernández

July 6, 2025 — 12.07pm

Kerr County, Texas: Michael McCown drove to the Hill Country from Austin as soon as he learned about news of the flood. His little girl, Linnie, had been at Camp Mystic, among the youngest group of girls situated inside the Bubble Inn cabin.

Devastating flooding rains had swept through this place and in parts of Central Texas beginning in the early hours of Friday. Floodwaters killed at least 51 people, including 15 children, some of them girls attending Camp Mystic summer camp, as well as the director of another camp on the bank of the Guadalupe River. As of Saturday, the search continued for the missing, which included about two dozen Camp Mystic girls who were unaccounted for, Linnie among them.

One of the cabins at Camp Mystic, where dozens of girls went missing after a flood.

The eight-year-olds had been singing songs, decorating bunk beds. They had prepared to make lifelong friends.

McCown went to the churches, registered with all requisite authorities and even visited the local morgue to identify a child they thought may have been his. But Linnie was still missing, so McCown went to the camp that lies just beyond the town of Hunt – evading fallen debris and potholes the river carved as it swallowed this area. He had to see it for himself.

He went to the cabin and looked over the waterlogged stuffed animals, grabbed some charm bracelets and looked at the photos stuck on the wall. McCown said he wanted to grab something for each parent of the 14 girls now unaccounted for inside that cabin.

“I’m just going to walk,” he said. And so walk he did, the length of the camp property into the river bend walled off by limestone bluffs.

Officials comb through the banks of the Guadalupe River after a flash flood swept through the area.

Camp Mystic on the South Fork Guadalupe River, right, and Cypress Creek

He stepped over broken tree limbs and tightly tangled vegetation that the wall of water deposited there.

“I’m going to walk until I find something.”

He needed to find Linnie. McCown walked near the black sport-utility vehicle where camp director Richard “Dick” Eastland was found, along with three girls he tried to save from the flood.

“Dick died doing what he loved,” said Craig Althaus, who worked on the property for 25 years and described finding some of the surviving girls in trees and on cabin roofs. “Taking care of those girls.”

A truck rests on a tree outside sleeping quarters at Camp Mystic.

The Eastlands have stewarded this property for nearly a century, friends said, taking care of what was once a gorgeous riverfront property and transforming it into a haven for girls coming of age and growing into their Christian faith.

Eastland Sr was the third generation of his family to manage the camp when he stepped into leadership in 1967.

His son, Richard Eastland Jr, said his father tried to rescue the girls in Bubble Inn cabin, situated about 140 metres from the river’s edge and about 4.5 metres above the water level. But the water came too fast.

Girls in adjoining cabins were forced to scramble up a rock face in their bare feet behind their cabins to reach the top of a hill in the dark, Althaus said.

A Camp Mystic mailbox is seen near the entrance to the establishment along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

But something went wrong at Twins and Bubble cabins where the camp’s youngest slept. Water came in from two directions, the south fork of the Guadalupe River and from a creek nearby.

“It made like a swirl right around those cabins like a toilet bowl,” Althaus said.

Eastland Jr’s brother, Edward, was also busy trying to rescue girls in the Twins cabins, where water rose nearly six metres in 20 minutes. He said his brother ordered the girls to get on the top bunk of their beds as the water sloshed them from side to side.

“We’ve never had water like this,” Eastland Jr said. “I just can’t believe it. It felt like every minute, the water rose by a foot.”

A damaged hall at Camp Mystic on the South Fork Guadalupe River, right, in Hunt, Texas, on Saturday.

Mexican and Polish workers who come seasonally to help lead the camp rushed all the girls they could find to higher ground. But it was a challenge for some of the young campers to scramble.

As McCown walked, he strode by the piles of soaked mattresses and pastel-coloured trunks decorated in stickers. When rescuers arrived, they moved out as much as they could to try to find survivors or recover bodies.

More fathers and grandfathers started arriving and picking through the things left behind: embroidered towels, shampoo bottles labelled with their names and shoes.

Wearing University of Texas burnt orange and rain boots, McCown continued to walk past them along the river’s edge for about a mile. He saw something. He looked closer.

The flooded Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas, on Friday.

It was a girl. But not Linnie. He alerted officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety. A helicopter arrived not long after.

“She’s out there somewhere with all her friends,” McCown said, describing his daughter as the most selfless little girl. “She was the sweetest little thing.”

As he spoke, a dazed-looking man emerged from the river bend and held up his phone to show a photo. It was of one of the missing girls.

“Did the girl you found look like her?” the unnamed man said.

McCown looked closely but it wasn’t her.