“A mother watches in horror as raging floods engulf her youngest daughter—what a camp counselor did next left people speechless, sparked a wave of outrage and gratitude, and changed the lives of an entire community forever. You won’t believe how it all ended.”

“I can’t say enough about these heroic counselors,” Lisa Miller tells PEOPLE after the flooding tragedy

The Miller sisters.Credit : Courtesy of Nicholas Miller

One Texas mom is speaking out after their three young daughters miraculously survived the deadly flooding at Camp Mystic.

Lisa Miller says she and her husband Nicholas were on a beach in France celebrating their anniversary when they first heard that there had been “some flooding” at the camp. But Miller, a former counselor and camper, tells PEOPLE she initially didn’t think much of it.

As a counselor, she says she once spent a day stranded on a hill due to floodwaters — and that any flooding that happens is usually relatively minor, plus she knows there’s a protocol in place for what to do until the water recedes.

It wasn’t until a friend let her know that two girls from her youngest daughter’s cabin were found down the Guadalupe River that she realized something “catastrophic” had happened.

The Miller family.Courtesy of Nicholas Miller

Although she didn’t initially hear anything from the camp staff — “they were consumed with the crisis at hand,” she says — when she texted camp director Mary Liz Eastland, the mom quickly learned that her daughters were accounted for, but that dozens of campers and an entire cabin were missing.

Also missing was her father-in-law Richard “Dick” Eastland, who owned the camp, and was later found dead.

How her daughters, who were spending their second summer at Mystic together, managed to escape as floodwaters inundated the camp still baffles her.

Children’s clothes hang on the branch of a tree on the bank of the Guadalupe River near Camp Mystic on July 6, 2025 in Hunt, Texas.

Eliza, 14, had the most “typical” experience of a Mystic flood, the mom says. She was on “Senior Hill,” and her cabin just happened to be at the “highest point.”

“They were totally isolated from the rest of the camp,” she explains. “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.”

Meanwhile, Genevieve, 12, was in the very last cabin in an area known as “the flats.” Miller says one counselor ran to the camp office around 2 a.m. local time to let them know that their cabin was filling with water.

That alert prompted the camp to begin evacuating the cabins with the camp owner even driving campers, including Genevieve, to safety at the Rec Hall. But water quickly began to pour into the building, so they moved to a balcony above.

“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,” the mom recalls. “The girls were scared, of course — I can’t say enough about these heroic counselors who had them singing camp songs and praying to keep them calm until the water receded, which it finally did.”

A view of Camp Mystic, the site of where at least 20 girls went missing after flash flooding in Hunt, Texas, on July 5, 2025.RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty

Miller’s youngest, 9-year-old Birdie, woke up at 2:30 a.m. that morning to the storm and couldn’t sleep, so she went to use the bathroom but noticed the water.

“Shortly thereafter, the counselors woke them up and had them put their things on the bed,” Miller says. “There was too much water outside the door to open it.”

After a counselor broke a window, each child was handed to the camp owner, who was there to help. As Birdie waited on the cabin porch for each girl to evacuate, she told her mom that the water reached her shoulders — and she was eventually hoisted onto another counselor’s back to get to safety.

Ultimately, all three girls were evacuated by Black Hawk helicopter to a reunification center and later reunited with Miller’s mom and stepdad as Miller and her husband were still out of town.

“I am still reeling,” she says. “The layers of this loss are unfathomable — the absolute heartbreak of the loss of these little girls, and their families’ sorrow, is of course paramount on all of our minds.”

And while floods have happened repeatedly over the years, Miller says there was nothing that could have prepared them for handling a storm of this magnitude.

Although she does believe cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) played a role, Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Services’ employees’ union, previously told CNN that he believes the offices had “adequate staffing and resources.”

Fahy went on to note that Austin-San Antonio office (one of the most closely involved in forecasting and warning about flooding from the river) does not have a warning coordination meteorologist, which is a direct link between forecasters and emergency managers.

A view inside of a cabin at Camp Mystic, the site of where at least 20 girls went missing after flash flooding in Hunt, Texas, on July 5, 2025.RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty

For now, Miller says she’s feeling a mix of emotions: “Heartbroken” about the situation, yet “grateful” her daughters are safe and for the staff that led them to safety.

“We received the first letters of the term the day the girls came home — each of them was having ‘the best term ever,’ and so happy to be back with their friends at camp,” Miller recalls. “All of them also reported their counselors were the best ones they’d ever had.”

Those “wonderful” counselors would eventually “save their lives with their quick thinking,” she says, “and we will never know how to properly repay them.”

To learn how to help support the victims and recovery efforts from the Texas floods, click here.