Camp Mystic director says ‘we tried our hardest’ in deadly flood: ‘It wasn’t enough to save your daughters’

A director of Camp Mystic , the all-girls Christian camp in the Texas Hill Country where 25 campers and two counselors were killed in a flash flood last summer, has offered a tearful apology to victim’s families for the loss of life. “We tried our hardest that night. It wasn’t enough to save your daughters,” Edward Eastland said, at a joint Texas House and Senate committee panel in Austin investigating the deadly flooding. “I’m so sorry.” Eastland said he and his father, Richard Eastland, the director of the camp who died in the flood, were on the campsite that night. Eastland said they had made a desperate attempt to save the girls when the banks of the Guadalupe River burst during heavy rain. Edward survived only after being swept into a tree. “These girls were our youngest campers and their amazing counselors who we watched grow up,” Eastland said. “The world was a better place with them in it, and the anger at us for not being able to keep them safe is completely reasonable.” The panel comes ahead of a full report into the disaster expected later this year. Camp Mystic’s owners want to reopen the camp in late May and said they will only use parts of the camp that didn’t flood. Members of the Eastland family testified for hours about their actions during the storm and changes they have made on evacuation planning, counselor training and whether the camp should be allowed to reopen. …