Texas flood victims: Girl ‘living her best life’ and ‘heart and soul’ of camp

An eight-year-old girl and the director of an all-girls’ summer camp are among the victims of flash floods in Texas that have claimed at least 51 lives, including 15 children.

Officials say most of the victims have been identified. Authorities have not yet released any names publicly.

Here’s what we know so far about the victims.

Eight-year-old Renee Smajstrla was at Camp Mystic when flooding swept through the summer camp for girls, her uncle said in a Facebook post.

“Renee has been found and while not the outcome we prayed for, the social media outreach likely assisted the first responders in helping to identify her so quickly,” wrote Shawn Salta, of Maryland.

“We are thankful she was with her friends and having the time of her life, as evidenced by this picture from yesterday,” he wrote. “She will forever be living her best life at Camp Mystic.”

Camp Mystic, where 27 children are missing, is a nearly century-old Christian summer camp for girls on the banks of the Guadalupe River near Hunt, Texas.

Operated by generations of the same family since the 1930s, the camp’s website bills itself as a place for girls to grow “spiritually” in a “wholesome” Christian atmosphere “to develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem”.

Heart O’ the Hills is another all-girls’ camp that sits along the Guadalupe River and it was right in the path of Friday’s flood.

Jane Ragsdale, described as the “heart and soul” of Heart O’Hills, “did not make it”, a statement shared on the camp’s official website said on Saturday.

Ragsdale, who started off as a camper then a counsellor, became the director and co-owner of the camp in 1976.

“We are mourning the loss of a woman who influenced countless lives and was the definition of strong and powerful,” the statement said.

No campers were residing at the site when the floods hit and and most of those who were there have been accounted for, according to the statement.

Sarah Marsh, a student at Cherokee Bend Elementary School in Alabama, would have entered third grade in August.

She, too, was attending Camp Mystic when the floods struck, and was reported as missing along with about two dozen other campers.

Her grandmother, Debbie Ford Marsh, asked for prayers in a post on Facebook on Friday. Just hours later she shared online that her granddaughter was among the girls killed.

“We will always feel blessed to have had this beautiful spunky ray of light in our lives. She will live on in our hearts forever!” she said.

In a post on Facebook, Alabama Senator Katie Britt said she’s “heartbroken over the loss of Sarah Marsh, and we are keeping her family in our thoughts and prayers during this unimaginable time”.

Nine-year-old Janie Hunt from Dallas, was also attending Camp Mystic and died in the floods.

Her grandmother Margaret Hunt told The New York Times she went to the camp with six of her cousins, who are all safe.

Margaret said Janie’s parents had to visit a funeral home and identify their daughter.

Janie is a great-granddaughter of the oil baron William Herbert Hunt.

As floodwaters tore through their trailer in Ingram, Texas, Julian Ryan turned to his fiancée Christina Wilson and said: “I’m sorry, I’m not going to make it. I love y’all” – Christina told Houston television station KHOU.

His body wasn’t recovered until hours later, after waters had receded.

Julian had just finished a late dishwashing shift when the Guadalupe River overflowed early Friday. He and Christina woke to ankle-deep water that quickly rose to their waists.

She told the station their bedroom door stuck shut and with water rushing in, Ryan punched through a window to get his family out – severely cutting his arm in the process.

Their 13-month-old and 6-year-old sons and his mother survived by floating on a mattress until help could arrive.

“He died a hero, and that will never go unnoticed,” Connie Salas, Ryan’s sister, told KHOU.

Katheryn Eads, 52, was swept away by floodwaters in the Kerrville area of Texas, early Friday morning after she and her husband, Brian, fled their campervan as rising water surged around them, Brian told The New York Times.

Another camper had offered them a ride and they made it across the street before the vehicle stalled in the flood. Moments later, both were pulled into the current. Brian said he lost sight of his wife after being struck by debris. He survived by clinging onto a tree until he reached dry land.

Katheryn’s body was later recovered. “God has her now,” her mother, Elizabeth Moss Grover, wrote on Facebook.

Amy Hutchinson, director of Olive Branch Counselling in Texas, where Eads had worked, told The Washington Post she was “a hope and a light to all who knew her… a stellar counsellor and professor.”

Nine-year-old Lila Bonner, a Dallas native was found dead after flooding near Camp Mystic, according to NBC News.

“In the midst of our unimaginable grief, we ask for privacy and are unable to confirm any details at this time,” her family said in a statement to the news outlet.

“We ache with all who loved her and are praying endlessly.”