A rumor that circulated online in early July 2025 claimed a video authentically showed Texas National Guard troops evacuating around two or three dozen campers from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp with two locations in the Kerr County community of Hunt, Texas.
At least 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, with facilities housing around 700 children, died as a result of flash floods occurring along the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country during the early morning hours of July 4. As of July 8, officials said five Camp Mystic campers and one counselor remained missing. Some 109 people died in total as a result of the area disaster, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said officials received notices of 161 missing people, as of this writing.
In one example of users sharing the video on X, on July 6, an X user posted (archived) three screenshots from the clip with a caption referencing Camp Mystic. The caption read, "JUST IN: A Texas National Guard truck rolls by with the back cargo area FULL OF RESCUED GIRLS from the campground that was WIPED OUT by the flood there. This warms my heart like nothing else."
(BarronTNews_/X)
Other users also shared the video, or screenshots from the clip, on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived), X (archived) and YouTube (archived).
An examination of evidence, all documented later in this story, found that the video did, in fact, show Texas National Guard troops rescuing campers specifically from Camp Mystic, as opposed to one of the other all-girls camps also located in Hunt.
Snopes contacted the Texas Military Department by email and phone to ask for further details, and will update this story if we learn more information.
Confirming the video shows Camp Mystic girls
As the popular @houstontips Instagram account noted in a post (archived), on July 6, the Texas Military Department first posted the video on its official Facebook (archived) and X (archived) accounts. The posts confirmed the girls were campers from a facility near Kerrville but did not name Camp Mystic. The caption read, "Texas National Guardsmen evacuate a group of campers needing assistance near Kerrville. Texas Military Department (TMD) personnel have been working around the clock to assist with evacuations and search and rescue operations."
Users responding to the posts asked when they shot the video and also if the girls in the video were from Camp Mystic.
CNN reported about a different, widely publicized video, recorded on July 4. The publication credited the clip to a Camp Mystic nurse, identified as Devon Paige Williams. The video, first published on her TikTok account @dpaige323 with a recording date of July 4, depicted Camp Mystic campers singing worship songs while a school bus driver evacuated them from the devastated area. The clip received millions of views.
However, another video Williams shared on her account confirmed the Texas Military Department's clip of girls in the high-water military vehicle showed campers from Camp Mystic. At the 0:36 mark in one of Williams' videos, the clip shows two girls, one wearing a gray hoodie and another in a pink sleeveless dress, climbing onto a military vehicle to find their seats.
The in-question video shared by the Texas Military Department showed the same two girls sitting just behind the driver.
Williams' video showed the same two girls loading in the military vehicle in the same seating as seen in the Texas Military Department's clip. (Snopes Illustration via @dpaige323/TikTok and Texas Military Department)
Williams captioned the clip with the recording date of July 4, and said, "This is footage from my evacuation and everything I saw. I wish you could see before shots to show how truly devastating it is." She also later posted a video captioned as, "Camp Mystic 6 days before the flood."
For further reading, another fact check previously confirmed as true that a photo authentically documented the rescue of six North Carolina residents from a mudslide after their mountain cabin collapsed due to Hurricane Helene in September 2024.