Mom shares daughters escape from Camp Mystic
Five campers and one 19-year-old counselor are among at least 173 people still missing in the floodwaters five days on from the tragedy. Lisa Miller's three daughters, 14-year-old Eliza, 12-year-old Genevieve and nine-year-old Birdie, all miraculously survived the horrific conditions. Little Birdie had the closest brush with danger as she was in a cabin closest to the Guadalupe River with other girls her age.
Birdie's father, Miller's husband Nicholas, shared in a post on X that his daughter 'was witness to friends floating away on mattresses and screaming coming from filled cabins.' She was woken about 2.30am to the horrendous storm, unable to go back to sleep due to the noise. When she went to use the bathroom, she noticed the water. Miller said shortly after, the counselors began waking the girls up and asking them to move their belongings onto the bed. Moments later, 'there was too much water outside the door to open it.'
She told People that the owner of the camp, Richard 'Dick' Eastland, arrived at the window of the cabin in an effort to rescue the girls and get them to higher ground. A counselor was forced to break a window and little Birdie waited on the cabin porch for each of her friends to be hoisted to safety. The water rose so fast that it was lapping at her shoulders by the time she was finally hoisted onto another counselor's back and whisked to safety. Eastland, considered a camp 'dad' for generations of campers who have come through his doors, tragically died trying to save the lives of girls in his care. 'The evacuation began with my middle daughter's cabin between 2 and 2.30 am,' Nicholas said on X. 'The evacuation warning from officials did not come until 4. No matter your party, please insist on funding the NWS, NOAA and FEMA. Lives can be saved with early detection and rapid response.'
The Trump administration has faced mounting criticism for its broad attacks on FEMA and the National Weather Service, raising questions about whether the limited resources and staff after DOGE cuts impeded on the services' ability to broadcast information quickly and effectively. Lisa Miller told the publication she and Nicholas were vacationing in Nice, France, when they first received the alert about flooding at the camp ground.
As a former camper and counselor, she initially wasn't too concerned, knowing that staff followed strict protocol and that flooding in the region has historically been minor. It wasn't until a friend informed her that two girls from her youngest daughter's cabin were found further down the Guadalupe River that she realized there had been a 'catastrophic' tragedy. She and her husband frantically tried to book seats on the first flight out of Nice but were met with frequent road blocks, leading Nicholas to make a desperate call-out on X.
Miller initially hadn't heard from the staff at the camp itself. She understood that they were 'consumed with the crisis at hand', but fired off a text message to director Mary Liz Eastland, who assured her that all three of her girls were accounted for. Eastland informed her that dozens of other girls - and an entire cabin - were missing, along with several counselors and the owner of the camp, Eastland. It has since emerged the camp sent an email to Camp Mystic families letting them know they'd been in direct contact with the families of all the missing girls.
Those who hadn't been contacted were assured their daughters were accounted for. Genevieve's cabin in an area referred to as 'the flats' was one of the first to begin taking in water at about 2am. One of the counselors ran to alert the camp office, sparking the initial wave of evacuations. She and her friends were rushed to the Rec Hall, but as the building began filling with water, they had to once again move to higher ground - a balcony up above the floor. 'Water began rising quickly, coming so close to the balcony that they could touch it, and the waves were lapping just beneath them against the balcony,' Miller said.
She praised the 'heroic counselors' who even in the face of such danger kept the youngsters calm by singing camp songs and leading them in prayer. As the chaos was unfolding in the cabins below, Miller's eldest daugher Eliza was blissfully unaware of the dangerous conditions facing the youngest camp members. Her cabin was up on 'Senior Hill' - the highest point of the camp and removed from the bulk of the danger. 'They were totally isolated from the rest of the camp,' she said. 'Their impression was it was just a very bad storm they were weathering together — at the time, it was a bit more of an adventure, or a crazy camp memory, than anything tragic. They were taking pictures and had no idea what was happening below.'
Ultimately, all three girls were evacuated from the camp via a Black Hawk helicopter and taken to a reunification center. As the Millers desperately tried to get home from Nice, the girls' grandparents met them and took them home. Nicholas said when he and his wife arrived home, the family huddled in one room and each of the girls began sharing their tales of survival.
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