Heartbreaking photo shows entire cabin of Camp Mystic girls washed away in Texas floods

A heartbreaking photo shows the girls and counsellors who were staying in one of the cabins at Camp Mystic in Texas before floods swept them away.

The Bubble Inn cabin, located less than 500 feet from the river, hosted 13 girls and two counsellors when it was hit by catastrophic flooding that killed nearly 90 people over the July Fourth weekend. Camp Mystic, a century-old all-girls Christian summer camp in the Texas Hill Country, announced they lost 27 campers and counsellors to the floodwaters.

Among those staying in the Bubble Inn cabin where the youngest girls of the camp, aged eight and 10. The location of the cabin, which took in water from the Guadalupe River and a creek nearby, made the girls' escape challenging.

READ MORE: Inside Camp Mystic where Texas floods swept girls to their deaths, with toys left behind

As of Monday morning, the bodies of 10 girls and counsellor Chloe Childress, 18, were found. Counsellor Katherine Ferruzzo and three other campers - Molly DeWitt, Ellen Getten and Abby Pohl - remain missing. The girls from the Bubble Inn cabin who are confirmed dead are Janie Hunt, Margaret Bellows, Lila Bonner, Lainey Landry, Sarah Marsh, Linnie McCown, Winne Naylor, Eloise Peck, Renee Smajstrla and Mary Stevens.

A photo taken in the cabin shows terrain and mud all over the room, with the girls' belongings, bags, blankets and clothes left behind. The extent of the damage is visible all over the large room.

In another cabin that was severely damage, mattresses can be seen on the floor, with dirt all over the place in the aftermath of the floods. Different photos that emerged last week showed beds and blankets covered in a thick sludge, with belongings including bags, toys and clothing strewn across the floor.

Images also showed the roof of a building sagging and pieces of jagged wood beneath it. Nearby trees were also knocked down by the force of the water. After the tragic floods, 13-year-old Elinor Lester, one of hundreds of campers, said the floods had "completely destroyed" the camp. She said: "The camp was completely destroyed. A helicopter landed and started taking people away. It was really scary."

Search-and-rescue teams have continued searching for the dead, using heavy equipment to untangle trees and wading into swollen rivers. Volunteers covered in mud sorted through chunks of debris, piece by piece, in an increasingly bleak task.

With additional rain on the way, more flooding still threatened in saturated parts of central Texas. Authorities said the death toll was sure to rise. After the summer camp confirmed 27 campers and counsellors were confirmed dead, the local sheriff said 10 girls and a counsellor remained missing in total.

Authorities have said one of the next steps would be investigating whether enough warnings were issued and why some camps did not evacuate or move to higher ground in a place long vulnerable to flooding, which some local residents refer to as "flash flood alley". The investigation will include a review of how weather warnings were sent out and received.

Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice said one of the challenges is that many camps and cabins are in places with poor phone reception. He said: "We definitely want to dive in and look at all those things. We're looking forward to doing that once we can get the search and rescue complete."

But some camps were aware of the dangers and monitoring the weather, with at least one moving several hundred campers to higher ground before the floors. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said recent government spending cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service did not delay any warnings.

"There's a time to have political fights, there's a time to disagree. This is not that time," he said. "There will be a time to find out what could been done differently. My hope is in time we learn some lessons to implement the next time there is a flood."

The weather service first advised of potential flooding on Thursday and then sent out a series of flash flood warnings in the early hours of Friday before issuing flash flood emergencies - a rare step that alerts the public to imminent danger. Authorities and elected officials have said they did not expect such an intense downpour - the equivalent of months of rain. However, some residents said they never received any warnings.

President Donald Trump, who signed a major disaster declaration for Kerr County and plans to visit the area, said Sunday that he does not plan to rehire any of the federal meteorologists who were fired this year. "This was a thing that happened in seconds. Nobody expected it," the president said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said local and federal weather services provided sufficient warnings. "That was an act of God. It's not the administration's fault that the flood hit when it did, but there were early and consistent warnings," she said. On Sunday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said more than three dozen people were unaccounted for across the state and more could be missing.