Youth Camp Safety and Regulation

Texas health officials have opened an investigation into "hundreds of complaints" about Camp Mystic’s 2025 operations, including its response to July 4 floods that killed 25 campers and two teenage counselors, as they decide whether to renew the Christian all‑girls camp’s license to reopen this summer on an unflooded portion of the site. The Department of State Health Services says the complaints allege violations of state youth‑camp laws, and has asked the Texas Department of Public Safety and its Texas Rangers unit to investigate alleged neglect during the disaster, in which the Guadalupe River rose from 14 to 29.5 feet in about an hour before dawn and the camp did not evacuate. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick publicly labeled the Rangers’ work a criminal investigation and urged regulators not to allow the camp to operate until that probe and a separate legislative inquiry are finished, even as more than 850 families have already signed up to return if permitted. Camp Mystic says it has cooperated with every inquiry and will continue to work with the Rangers to establish what happened, while families of several victims have sued the camp, and a district judge last month ordered preservation of damaged cabins and other flooded structures as evidence. One child’s body, 8‑year‑old Cile Steward, has still not been recovered, and officials say the broader flood along the river killed at least 136 people, intensifying scrutiny of camp safety, emergency planning and state oversight of youth camps in high‑risk areas.