Texas’s summer camp evacuates 70 people ahead of mortal sudden floods

A Texas summer camp near the Guadalupe River evacuated some 70 children and adults after camp officials noticed growing waters and a rain flood at the beginning of July 4.

The presbyterian Mo-ranch assembly of 500 Acres, a recreation destination that had been organizing a summer camp, as well as a youth conference with churches in the United States, is located in the headwaters of the river and had been monitoring the situation for approximately 24 hours, the director of communications of Mo-Rancha Lisa Winters Lisa Lisa He told Kens5.

It was around 1 in the morning on Friday when a facilities manager, Aroldo Barrera, notified his boss, who had been monitoring the reports of the storms that were approaching, said Associated Press.

Despite the absence of warning by local authorities, Mo-Ranch camp officials acted quickly alone, relocating about 70 children and adults that remain during the night in a building near the river. With the safe children, the leaders of the camp, including President and CEO Tim Huchton, avoided the catastrophe that hit at least another camp near Hunt, Texas.

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Volunteers are looking for missing people along the banks of the Guadalupe River after recent floods on Sunday, July 6, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. (Photo AP/Rodolfo González)

“They helped them to pack,” Winters told the AP on Sunday. “They took them out, they took them out, put them on the highest field.”

Other places were much worse. The sudden floods roared through Texas Hill Country before dawn on Friday, decimating the landscape near the river and leaving more than 80 dead and dozens not counted. Until Sunday, the authorities said 10 girls from the nearby Camp Mistic were still missing. The rescue and recovery teams combed the area for them and others not yet counted for days later.

“We have the great blessing and the advantage of being high enough to bring people to higher land,” Winters told Kens5 on Saturday. “We were making our plans and changing our plans and moving people to a higher land very much anticipated last night.”

She said Mo-Ranch had been organizing several hundred campers, several hundred people from the conference, as well as regular guests there for the holiday weekend, all of which were counted. She explained that the camp was unimpossed.

“Mo-Ranch is a Christian camp, and we prepare children to be strong and be resistant, and to have faith they can advance,” Winters told Kens. “The ironic part of this, the great youth celebration I attended last night, we only changed plans because we knew that something was coming, the whole issue was stress and anxiety for children and how to fight against him and how to be powerful. They simply put this in their place and joined.”

“I can’t say there was no anxiety. It wasn’t right there when it happened. But everyone was prepared. They were all strong. Everyone surely succeeded,” Winters said.

The decision to be added to the growing accounts of how camps and residents in the area say they were allowed to make their own decisions in the absence of warnings or notifications of the county.

Local authorities have faced great scrutiny and, sometimes, they have diverted questions about how much warning they had or could provide the public, saying that the reviews will come later, according to the AP. For now, they say they are focusing on bailouts. The authorities have said that they did not expect such an intense downpour, the equivalent of the value of the rainy months for the area.

A view of the Camp Mystic after sudden floods in Hunt, Texas, on July 5, 2025. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP through Getty Images)

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Winters told AP that Mo-ranch did not receive direct information from the county officials about the floods they could, and that they did, take lives.

“We had no warning that this were,” Winters said, adding that it would have been “devastating” if camp officials were not looking at the weather and river’s waters.

Mo-Ranch “saw him very anticipated, and did something about it,” he said.

Winters told Kens that there are hundreds of camps located along the Guadalupe River, and Mo-ranch is at the top of the cliffs in Hunt.

Around 7 am on Friday, camp staff began to contact children’s parents, telling them that their children were safe.

“They knew that these parents would wake up and only see all these images of lost children or the river,” Winters told the AP. “They are like, ‘Tell your parents that you are fine’ … we make sure that each guest, each child, was counted.”

A view inside a cabin in Camp Mystic, a summer camp by the river in Texas. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP through Getty Images)

The camp, which is found in the higher terrain than some in the area, suffered some damage, but not as significant as others, Winters said.

“The buildings don’t matter,” he said. “I can’t imagine losing children or people.”

She said a resistant aluminum kayak was wrapped around a tree “like a pretzel.”

“That only shows you the power of water. I don’t know how people could survive. We are blessed,” he said.

The camp remained closed on Sunday and Mo-ranch was working on ways to help other camps affected by flooding.

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“We are in a difficult place because others are really suffering,” said Winters, who got excited during an interview, to the AP. “We are a camps brotherhood. We take care of each other.”