A familiar name came up last fall when Texas legislators were looking for someone to write an investigative report on the July 4, 2025, flooding disaster at Camp Mystic.
Michael Massengale is a Houston arbitrator and former appellate justice who was the lead author of a groundbreaking report on the May 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde.
The shooting at Robb Elementary ended the lives of 19 fourth-grade students and two teachers. The flooding disaster at Camp Mystic near Hunt caused the deaths of two teenaged counselors and 25 young campers, many near the age of the Uvalde victims, along with camp director Richard “Dick” Eastland.
The Uvalde report would dispel rumors and shine a harsh light on one of the most embarrassing law enforcement chapters in Texas history. The report’s findings about operational breakdowns and lax school security guided legislation aimed at improving training and communication for first responders and increasing school safety requirements and compliance.
At Camp Mystic, where generations of girls had frolicked, sang and prayed, the report presented June 18 to the Senate and House General Investigating Committees concluded that the camp lacked written emergency plans required by state regulations, did not adequately prepare for the storm, did not timely evacuate cabins despite ample opportunity and unnecessarily traumatized parents by delivering incomplete and conflicting information after the flood.
Laws were enacted in 2025 to strengthen requirements for camp emergency plans and state oversight, prohibit the location of cabins in certain floodplains and mandate camp communication capabilities. Additional legislation is expected to be considered when lawmakers meet next year.
Parallel Failures: Preparedness and Communication
In both reports, Massengale and lead investigator Casey Garrett, a Houston criminal law specialist, documented the failings of adults charged with protecting the children in compelling and detailed reports to the Texas Legislature. The documents lay out dismal facts about the lack of preparedness and chaotic response to both disasters.
Last week, barely a year after the 2025 flooding in Kerr County, Garrett and Massengale watched with trepidation as an eerily similar flood struck the same area. In interviews with The Lawbook they said camp operators and residents in the area were more attuned to the danger this time, a factor that likely saved lives.
Massengale said new river sirens mandated by lawmakers provided critical information but would not have been enough to overcome Camp Mystic’s lack of an emergency flood evacuation plan.
“You still have to act on those plans and be prepared to actually do the things that are necessary to protect yourself and others who you’re responsible for in those situations,” he said. “I mean, people had their phones going off between 1:14 a.m. and 3 a.m. on July 4th [of 2025] and the [flood warning] signal can become just another one of those alerts that people become numb to and become accustomed to ignoring if they don’t take seriously the fact that they have to be prepared.”
Alert fatigue was also on Garrett’s mind last week. She heard about it from survivors last year but said it “never carried the day for me.”
“This idea that we’re just going to ignore when something gets ratcheted up to a warning — I as an outsider felt that was very difficult to defend with the flood history of that area,” she said. “I just don’t think that was an excuse. Not when you have taken custody of 600 of other people’s children.”
[T]here were at least 39 adults present at the Camp Mystic Guadalupe River camp, excluding the teenage counselors assigned to camper cabins, who could have been tasked to assist with an orderly flood evacuation. But there was no plan for them to do so, and no training that would have prepared them for what to do. (Report on the Camp Mystic Flood Disaster, page 37.)
Deficiencies in state oversight of camp regulations and inadequacies of Kerr County leadership also is highlighted. Just two days before the flood, an annual inspection by the Department of State Health Services incorrectly affirmed Mystic’s compliance with the requirements.
“What I think everybody agrees on … is just how disorganized the management of that situation in the aftermath was, how unprepared the local community was, and Uvalde was very much the same,” Massengale said. “It’s very difficult for all these small communities to have all the resources, all the training, all the preparation to do what they need to do when they’re confronted with these horrible circumstances.”
While it’s probably not realistic to equip all communities to face the most extreme circumstances and manage the aftermath, “We’ve got to do better,” Massengale said.
“That means that we’ve got to have the expertise, the training, the know-how, the management capability at a higher level that you can bring into these situations and help these communities faster,” he said. “Part of the response is saving people from flood waters, and some of the response is dealing with people who are facing just a nightmare of not knowing whether their loved ones are going to be found or not.”
“Obviously losing your child is the biggest part of that and the worst part of that,” Massengale continued. “But so much of what they experienced was also the sitting and waiting and not being sure, not getting information or getting wrong information.
“And those things add to their trauma, add to the harm that they experience and contributes to their trauma. And we’ve got to do better to help them, not hurt them.”
In Uvalde, frantic parents waited outside the school as hundreds of local, state and federal officers converged on the scene but failed to confront the shooter for an agonizing 73 minutes. The shooter, a troubled high school dropout, was barricaded in a classroom until being killed by a Border Patrol Tactical Unit.
As that report stated: “At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety.”
The former school district police chief is awaiting trial on 10 counts of child endangerment. In January, a Corpus Christi jury acquitted a former school police officer of child abandonment and endangerment.
Collaborative Effort
The Uvalde report was completed in an intensive six weeks following the massacre and was helped by a three-member investigative committee of experienced lawyers that included former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso and Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock. Burrows became House Speaker in January 2025.
Garrett said she did not know Massengale until they worked on the school shooting investigation. She spent 14 years with the Harris County district attorney’s office before starting a criminal defense practice.
Garrett used her skills for interviewing witnesses while Massengale drew on his love of writing and experience sifting through large amounts of material to explain complex disputes.
Their relationship gelled.
“Everybody just wants to do their very best, and so I think we all showed up our very best selves with our individual skill sets” while facing “an aggressive timeline,” Garrett said. “I think what makes us a good team is we listen to each other.”
Work on the flood report was intense but stretched out over a six-month period.
Garrett interviewed flood survivors, families of the victims and members of the Eastland family, who ran the camp.
The legislative committee members decided to focus the investigation on the three-hour period starting when the weather service issued a flash flood warning at 1:14 a.m.
The decision to limit the scope of the report remains controversial. Dozens of written comments to the committee express dismay that all the estimated 135 lives lost did not receive attention from lawmakers.
“We were told very directly, the focus is on what happened at Camp Mystic, not all the other camps, not everybody else who was impacted,” Massengale said. “And it’s not that those things aren’t important, and there may be more investigations to come.”
“To tell that story, it required a degree of context. We had to at least look at some background of Camp Mystic and their staffing, their training, their preparation. We had to look at the days leading up to it because that was part of the story, including the weather alerts that came and the local preparations. The government, emergency responders and disaster preparation and response are part of the context of the Camp Mystic story,” he said.
Legal Community Touched
Most of the campers who perished were ages 8 and 9 and had been staying in cabins near the Guadalupe River named Bubble Inn and Twins I and II.
The 115-page report is dedicated to them, with each memorialized with a photo and description. The tributes were written by Massengale based on interviews and other information.
Several of the flood victims had parents well known in the Texas legal community. Among the law firms impacted was Baker Botts, where Massengale spent the first decade of his career.
Chloe Childress of Houston, an 18-year-old counselor at Bubble Inn, was the daughter of Wendie and Matthew Childress. Wendie practiced commercial litigation at Yetter Coleman and now works in litigation finance. Matthew serves as chief growth and operations officer for Grey Reed.
Chloe was very excited to begin her freshman year at The University of Texas at Austin as a proud fourth-generation Longhorn. She anticipated becoming a doctor, furthering her desire to be a strong, independent woman, but also helping others. (Report, page 12.)
Ellen Getten of Houston was the daughter of Doug and Jennie Getten. Doug is a partner at Baker Botts where he represents underwriters and companies on energy deals.
She gave every person a hug and would not let anyone leave her presence without a huge one. There were no strangers in her life, only people she had not met yet and hugged. (Report, page 16.)
Hanna and Rebecca Lawrence of Dallas were the 8-year-old twin daughters of Lacy and John Lawrence. Lacy is a partner emeritus at Akin, and John is co-chair of Baker Botts securities and shareholder litigation practice group.
Hanna loved being the instigator of the sort of joyful chaos that made your heart skip a beat, but also brought a huge smile to your face.
Rebecca had a soft voice and loved calm, quiet, and snuggles. She loved animals. All animals, but especially big cats. (Report, page 22.)
Focus on Camp Director
Garrett and Massengale, along with lawyers Heather McFarlane and Kim Parks, interviewed dozens of camp employees and others, including surviving members of the Eastland family. They, along with lawmakers, visited the camp to understand the site geography.
The report contains a short memorial section for Eastland, 70, who died while attempting to evacuate campers. His known and likely actions drive the narrative.
As the directors and staff of Camp Mystic went to bed on July 3, the Flood Watch was still in effect, but nobody was aware of it, and nobody was exercising additional vigilance, with the likely exception of Dick. There also was no outreach from Kerr County or its local government partners to alert the camp about the Flood Watch or any expectations of severe weather. (Report, page 75.)
Dick’s decision to load campers into his vehicle is a mystery. He knew it was unsafe to drive during a flood. … The only apparent explanation is that he must have believed it to be his last option, because they were sure to drown had they stayed inside Bubble Inn.
Sometime midday on July 4, rescue workers found the bodies of Dick Eastland and three Bubble Inn campers inside Dick’s Tahoe. The other Bubble Inn campers and counselors all were found later deceased, downriver. (Report, page 86.)
The document includes maps of the camp layout, the watches and warnings issued by the National Weather Service, and a timeline. There is a photo of Dick Eastland and nine grounds crew members taken at 2:14 a.m. inside a large shed. Others picture campers walking to higher ground in the rain.
A Writer at Heart
Massengale, 54, joined JAMS in 2020 as an arbitrator focusing on energy industry disputes. He was a justice on the First Court of Appeals from 2009-2018.
He drew on his varied experience in approaching his assignments for the Legislature.
“I love to write,” Massengale says in a video on JAMS website. “I enjoy the opportunity to explain a legal dispute in a way that demonstrates to the parties that their evidence was heard, their legal arguments were carefully considered, and the outcome has been explained.”
In demand as an arbitrator, Massengale says he was hesitant about committing to the camp investigation. He also was nervous about personal connections he had with some of the families.
The Eastlands’ effort to reopen part of the camp this summer, a decision since abandoned, split the community of families who patronized Mystic.
“I knew people had strong opinions, differing strong opinions,” he said. “So, I was a little concerned about that. It didn’t stop me from saying yes. But I was cognizant that I could be taking on something that would end up being controversial.”
Court hearings were already taking place in state court litigation filed by many families of the deceased campers. The investigators decided to leverage work those lawyers had done, being frank in telling them that they would like the benefit of any factual developments they were willing to share.
“It’s really a one-way street, because everybody wanted to know what we were doing,” he said. “We tried to be very cautious about being a two-way street in that regard. We told people that you can read the report when everybody else does.”
Garrett said the lawyers were forthcoming and professional.
The litigation was stayed when the camp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection June 24 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. Last week a majority of the families asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. Lopez to clarify whether the automatic stay impacts their ability to continue pursuing claims against certain individual defendants.
State records show that JAMS has been paid about $240,000 for the hours of Massengale and colleague McFarlane, billed at lower rates than usual. More payments could be forthcoming.
At the conclusion of the June hearing, the chairman of the House committee, Rep. Morgan Meyer, thanked the investigators for their “thorough and independent review.”
“They walked the ground at Camp Mystic and brought a rare combination of rigor and compassion to a painful task,” he said.
Meyer praised witnesses who spoke with the investigators.
“Texas owes you our gratitude,” he said. “You have relived the worst day of your lives so that others can be spared. We will make sure that Texas is ready the next time the water rises.”