Colorful summer clothes, photos, plastic sandals. Stuffed animals loved enough to have been allowed to come along to the summer camp. Everything is wet and covered in mud, thrown out haphazardly.
The images from Bubble Inn, Camp Mystic's most lake-adjacent cabin, bear witness to the flood's young victims.
When the water began to rise in the middle of the night, camp director Dick Eastland tried to save the girls in the cabin. But everything went too fast – in just 45 minutes, the Guadalupe River had risen almost eight meters. Eastland was found dead in a car along with three deceased girls.
Beloved animals
In a photo taken a few days earlier, 13 happy girls in gym shoes and white clothes, between eight and nine years old, are seen. "Bubble Inn 2025", reads a text in yellow and green. Ahead of them lay four camp weeks, long summer days with newly made friends. Of the girls in the picture, twelve have so far been found dead, one is still missing.
In American media, the confirmations have come one by one. Eloise Peck, an eight-year-old who "loved spaghetti but not more than she loved dogs and animals", according to the family's statement to Fox 4. Best friend Lila Bonner, 9. Eight-year-old Sarah Marsh, nine-year-old Janie Hunt. Renee Smajstrla, 9, whose family expresses gratitude that their daughter's last days were filled with happiness and friendship.
"She will forever live her best life at Camp Mystic", they write on social media.
Also, the two leaders of the youngest group, 18 and 19 years old, perished.
Searched in vain
Michael McCown dropped everything and drove to the camp in Kerr from his home in Austin when he heard about the downpour, writes The Washington Post in a report. A few days earlier, he had hugged his eight-year-old daughter Linnie goodbye outside Bubble Inn. The girls were singing and making faces in their bunk beds.
She's out there somewhere with all her friends, said McCown a few hours after the disaster, walking along the riverbank.
He didn't find Linnie, but another lifeless little body that was soon picked up by a helicopter. Another father approached as if in a daze, showed McCown a photo – "did the girl you found look like this?"
McCown shook his head. The other man walked on without a word.
Linnie McCown was found dead on Sunday, according to The Washington Post.
