The families of 13 campers and two counselors who died during the deadly floods that ravaged Camp Mystic in Central Texas are suing the camp, alleging it put “profit over safety” and ignored campers’ and counselors’ pleas to evacuate. Four lawsuits in total were filed Tuesday from the families of campers Eloise Peck, Virginia Naylor, Hadley Hanna, Virgina Hollis, Jane Hunt, Lucy Dillon, Kellyanne Lytal, Ellen Getten, Margaret Bellows, Lila Bonner, Molly DeWitt, Lainey Landry and Blakely McCrory, and counselors Chloe Childress and Katherine Ferruzzo.The lawsuit filed on behalf of Bellows, Bonner, DeWitt, Landry, McCrory, Childress and Ferruzzo claims the deaths of 25 campers and two counselors in a July 4 flood could have been prevented. The families of the campers and counselors allege Camp Mystic chose to not “safely evacuate” its campers and counselors and instead told them to stay in the cabins “regardless of life-threatening floods.”The suit lays out alleged negligence by Richard “Dick” Eastland, owner and executive director of Camp Mystic, and Edward Eastland, director of Camp Mystic, in properly responding to warnings of flash flooding. Dick Eastland also died in the flood.Ryan DeWitt said in a statement that the lawsuit is part of honoring his daughter Molly.“We carry the memory of our daughter in everything we do. This legal step is one of honoring her, and we believe that truth and justice are essential to finding peace—not only for our family, but for every family affected,” he said. “We trust that through this process, light will be shed on what happened, and our hope is that justice will pave the way for prevention and much-needed safety reform.”The belongings of campers sit outside one of Camp Mystic's cabins near the Guadalupe River in Hunt, Texas, on July 7 after a deadly flash flood swept through the area.via Associated PressThe lawsuit alleges the camp received alerts from the National Weather Service starting on July 3. It also claims the Eastland family, which has owned the camp since 1939, had experienced deadly floods throughout the camp’s 100-year history and that “flooding has become a defining part of the Camp’s history.”The lawsuit filed on behalf of Eloise Peck alleges that Camp Mystic “betrayed” the trust of the parents and that the July 4 flood was “predictable” because of past floods there. At 1:14 a.m. on July 4, the camp received a National Weather Service warning of “life threatening flash flooding.” The multifamily lawsuit alleges that Camp Mystic took “no steps to protect the lives of its campers or counselors for more than an hour after” that warning. Instead, it claims, the Eastland family spent the next hour and 15 minutes trying to protect camp equipment. At 2:20 a.m., counselors from the cabins Bug House and Look Inn ran across the camp to seek help and warn that water was beginning to pour into Bug House. The Eastlands told the counselors to put down towels, according to the lawsuit, and to “stay put ‘because that’s the plan.’” A Camp Mystic T-shirt found by a search and rescue volunteer, photographed in Comfort, Texas on July 6, 2025. The volunteer found the T-shirt yesterday along the Guadalupe River near Ingram, Texas. "I hope I find the person to return their belongings, not to find closure," he said.The Washington Post via Getty ImagesAt about 3:35 a.m., Dick Eastland drove to the cabin Bubble Inn and loaded 13 campers and two counselors in his Chevrolet Tahoe. His car was submerged by 3:51 a.m. and appeared to have smashed into a tree. Everyone in the car died. The lawsuit contends Dick Eastland “knew better than anyone” how dangerous it is to drive through flood waters, calling his actions “grossly negligent.”While Dick Eastland went to Bubble Inn, Edward Eastland went to the camp’s Twins cabins and told the counselors and campers to stay put because the flood waters would go back down, the lawsuit alleges.The lawsuit says the water pressed the girls against the cabin ceiling, while others swam out to avoid drowning in the cabin. Eleven campers from those cabins were killed. “This tragedy was entirely preventable,” the lawsuit writes. “Bubble Inn and Twins are only 300 feet from Rec Hall and 70 feet from a nearby hill.”The lawsuit also alleges that the Eastland family was “well aware” of the risks of flooding. Prior to 2013, two of the cabins that flooded during the July 4 disaster were in a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area, meaning they had to adhere to certain floodplain management regulations. But in 2013, the camp asked the agency for those cabins to be removed from the Special Flood Hazard Area, and FEMA approved the change. “This did not change whether any of the cabins were prone to flooding or their relation to the river,” the lawsuit writes. “The only effect was for the Eastlands to save money. While in the floodplain, owners must pay expensive insurance premiums, and renovations require certifications and other costly measures. Removing the cabins from FEMA’s flood maps eliminated these expensive requirements for the Camp, but it did not make the cabins safer.”The lawsuit filed by Ellen Getten’s family alleges that the camp had enough time to evacuate the campers and counselors and could have saved lives. The other lawsuit filed on behalf of the families of Lucy Dillon, Hadley Hanna, Virginia Hollis, Jane Hunt, Kellyanne Lytal and Virginia Naylor alleges that the camp “did not immediately scramble to evacuate any of the campers in their care,” instead focusing on camp equipment. In a statement to HuffPost, Camp Mystic said they “continue to pray for the grieving families and ask for God’s healing and comfort.”Jeff Ray, legal counsel for Camp Mystic, said in a statement that they “empathize” with the families.“We intend to demonstrate and prove that this sudden surge of floodwaters 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,” Ray said. “We disagree with several accusations and misinformation in the legal filings regarding the actions of Camp Mystic and Dick Eastland, who lost his life as well. We will thoroughly respond to these accusations in due course.”The lawsuit filed on behalf of Bellows, Bonner, DeWitt, Landry, McCrory, Childress and Ferruzzo claims the Eastland family knew about several of the campers and counselors’ deaths, yet told families that they were “unaccounted for,” leading some families to have “false hope.”The suit also says that Camp Mystic has sent out letters with an image of Dick Eastland singing in a heavenly choir with the dead campers and counselors, and the camp has “reached out to older siblings of those that died with veiled references to forgiveness.”“And through it all, the Camp refuses to accept any responsibility for its actions and failures to act, defiantly blaming this tragedy on ‘an act of God’ that no responsible steps could have avoided,” the lawsuit says.