Bubble Inn saw generations of 8-year-olds enter as strangers and emerge as confident young ladies equipped with new skills from the great outdoors and lifelong friends – bonds that would one day prove vital in the face of unfathomable tragedy.

Flash floods surged through in the middle of the night, but many local officials appeared unaware of the unfolding catastrophe, initially leaving people near the river on their own.

Young campers and a dad saving his family were among the dozens killed in the historic flash floods that tore through central Texas over the holiday weekend.

The “Bubble Inn” bunkhouse hosted the youngest kids at Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp caught in the deadly July 4 flooding in the state’s Hill Country.

For decades, Dick and Tweety Eastland presided over Camp Mystic with a kind of magisterial benevolence that alumni well past childhood still describe with awe.