Could the Girls of Camp Mystic Have Been Saved?

Dozens of campers died in a Texas flood last summer. Was it an act of God or the result of a catastrophic failure by the adults entrusted with hundreds of little girls’ lives? Kerry Howley spends time with people on both sides of the painful divide in the Mystic community, examining how faith, tradition, and mythology can buoy people during tragedy, or betray them:

Edward Eastland asked if he could play a song on his guitar at Chloe’s funeral and was slotted to do so until Matthew learned more about the timeline of events at Camp Mystic in the early hours of the Fourth of July. The first National Weather Service warning had reached Dick at 1:14 a.m.: LIFE THREATENING FLASH FLOODING. At the same time, the service broadcast on social media: MOVE IMMEDIATELY TO HIGHER GROUND. Around 2 a.m., a pair of counselors walked to the office and warned staff that their cabins were flooding; they were sent back to their cabins to shelter in place. Chloe had probably died around 4 a.m. “It’s like, Wait a minute,” Matthew told me the first time we talked. “There’s three hours. What the fuck is happening? ” He told a friend to tell Edward he would not be part of the ceremony, was not to sit with Chloe’s friends, and was not to “hold court.”

“I went to seven funerals in one week,” Jennie Getten told me later. They were navigating “a level of darkness I didn’t even know was possible,” said Blake Bonner, Lila’s father. Heaven’s 27 is what they called the dead, which led many people to make the mistake of thinking there were 27 sets of grieving parents when there were, in fact, 26; Lacy and John Lawrence had lost 8-year-old twins.