From Matthew Childress' home in Houston you can hear the bells at St. Luke's United Methodist Church, the same church where his daughter Chloe's funeral was held on July 12 — about a week after she lost her life in catastrophic flooding in the Texas Hill Country.
For Childress, the funeral was overwhelming. He stood in front of a packed house in the church and told the crowd how he imagined Chloe and her fellow Camp Mystic counselor, Katherine Ferruzzo, were helping others as the flood waters overtook their cabin.
"Chloe was not just my hero. She was an actual hero," Childress said. "I know she was leading those children with Katherine by her side. Following the counselor policies, doing everything they could in their power when it got bad to lead those girls to safety.
"She wasn't just my hero," he added. "She was their hero."
Since then, he's turned his grief into action — advocating for public safety legislation and emergency warning systems in Texas and elsewhere.
As he heard the church bells ring in April, Childress paused.
"It's beautiful," he said.
One year later
Saturday marks one year since deadly floods ravaged the Texas Hill Country and claimed more than 130 lives on the July 4 holiday weekend.
The catastrophic flooding unfolded quickly in the early morning hours July 4, 2025, while many were still asleep. The Guadalupe River rose as much as 38 feet, according to federal officials. The water damaged or destroyed homes and buildings across the region as it rushed through an area marked by limestone and rolling hills.
That includes Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp with cabins that sit on the banks of the Guadalupe River and Cypress Creek near Hunt, a small town in Kerr County. The camp operated for about 100 years, hosting hundreds of young girls from across the state and country each year. It has been operated by the Eastland family since the mid-1970s.
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Camp leaders were slow to evacuate campers even as the river rose from 14 feet to nearly 30 within an hour. Hardest hit were the Twins and Bubble Inn cabins, which both sat in a particularly low-lying area of the camp closest to the river. Those cabins housed the youngest campers, ages 8 and 9.
Of the 28 deaths at the camp — including 25 campers — 15 were from Bubble Inn and 11 from Twins.
Matthew and Wendie Childress' 18-year-old daughter, Chloe, was a counselor in Bubble Inn. Matthew Childress said she was so excited to go, she left a day earlier than expected.
Three generations of the Childress family had attended Camp Mystic: Matthew’s mother, his sister and cousins, and Chloe.
"This is somewhere that has been around for 99 years, almost an entire century," Matthew said. "It has majesty. It’s beautiful. You’re disconnected from the real world — you’re able to go to this place and have such a good time, fun, connecting with friends and making new friends across the state and beyond."
Chloe was set to spend a month at Camp Mystic, having returned for the first time as a counselor.
Instead, Matthew and Wendie Childress drove from Houston to the Hill Country after the flood and identified Chloe's body at a funeral home in Kerrville on July 5, 2025.
Since then, Matthew said he's been oscillating between different stages of grief.
"It could be a picture, it could be an action, it could be driving by a restaurant that you went to, but we live in this world every single day that I find myself just shaking my head, saying, ‘I can’t believe I find myself here,'" he said.
In the months since Chole's passing, Matthew, Wendie and other families who lost loved ones at the camp have immersed themselves in the work to make sense of their losses. They've pushed for state investigations and new legislation in Texas and across the U.S., along with filing lawsuits against the camp in hopes of preventing other families from experiencing a similar tragedy.
"It’s been a great silver lining to what we’ve been fighting for to help other states prevent such tragedies that happened at Camp Mystic," Matthew said.
Turning grief into action
In the immediate weeks after the floods, the families channeled their grief and anger into action. They began working alongside lobbyists and lawmakers. The group called themselves "Heaven’s 27," a name chosen to honor the girls who died at the camp.
The Childresses and several other families made arrangements to meet with Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows.
"We had hour-and-a-half meetings with each of those individuals and each meeting ended with us giving them our request, which was to, in the next special session, to make camp safety a priority," Matthew said.
In September, Abbott signed several laws aimed at making camps safer. The state ultimately allocated nearly $300 million for relief efforts and to improve flood preparedness.
This summer, youth camps in Texas need state-approved emergency plans and must train campers on them. Any camps located in floodplains need to follow several new requirements, including adding evacuation equipment like ladders to cabins.
And perhaps most critically,they must evacuate if the National Weather Service issues a flood warning alert.
Camp Mystic, after initially announcing plans to reopen part of its campgrounds, will not operate this year and has filed for bankruptcy.
Matthew said the grief of losing his daughter isn't linear. Even a year later, the reality of what happened still feels hard to accept.
"It's continued to be tough finding new routines, new rhythms of our lives moving on without our daughter, and part of what gives us purpose is the things that we're fighting for," he said. "Also losing ourselves in work, keeping ourselves occupied plus the efforts that we're doing to replicate the legislation that we passed in Texas and other states."
Matthew said their group has been working with lawmakers and organizations in other states, testifying and educating legislators for how they should craft their laws for each state's unique needs and different geographies.
Their work led to the passage of a similar law in Alabama. In April, Gov. Kay Ivey signed the Sarah Marsh Heaven's 27 Camp Safety Act.
Matthew said he sees momentum in the other bills filed in Maryland, Missouri and Oklahoma.
"Most meaningful to all of us is what we are doing across other states," he said. "It brings such joy and happiness that their lives are not just lost in vain, that they can be conceived or seen as heroes helping to save other lives."
Never-ending pursuit
Almost all of the victims' families filed lawsuits last year alleging Camp Mystic leaders failed to evacuate campers and counselors despite worsening flood conditions, resulting in their daughters' deaths.
The lawsuits seek more than $1 million in damages, but do not specify an exact amount.
In April, the judge overseeing the cases ordered three days of open testimony, which brought the Eastlands to the stand to answer several difficult questions about their role in the tragedy — which claimed the life of camp owner Dick Eastland.
Testimony revealed several missteps by camp leaders during the floods, including: delayed action by staff after early warnings had already gone out, that there was no written evacuation plan and that they moved canoes before evacuating the girls.
"All that information was shocking on the face of it but also confirmed everything that we had been claiming. And post-that, there was a tremendous amount of relief," Matthew said. "You know, it felt like that there was a weight lifted from many of us. Speaking for myself, it was such a relief to have more of the public understand the facts and the fact pattern that happened."
Jury trials for all cases had been scheduled for next year. But in June, Camp Mystic filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, putting the lawsuits in limbo.
Camp Mystic’s legal team did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Two weeks ago, the Texas Senate and House released reports detailing key findings from their investigations into the Camp Mystic disaster.
Matthew considers his work contributing to the various legal proceedings, criminal investigations and state investigations his "night job" and said it gives him purpose.
In an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle, published ahead of the one-year anniversary, he credited the relentless efforts of Heaven's 27 with uncovering the truth.
He noted without their work, "It is entirely possible that the events of that night would have faded from public scrutiny and escaped meaningful accountability."
At a recent outing with his wife, Wendie, she asked him, "How does this end?" Matthew replied, "I hope it never does."
"Not because grief should never end," he wrote. "Not because accountability should never come. But because the pursuit of safety can never be finished."
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