Twins rescued from camps destroyed in the deadly Texas floods speak for first time

WACO, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) - A set of twins rescued when their neighboring summer camps were overtaken by the deadly flash flooding in Texas are thankful they still have each other while grieving the loss of so many.

Clara and Nolan Shelton, both 14 years old, spoke for the first time with KWTX about the nightmare that unfolded when an overnight storm sent river levels rising nearly 30 feet in an hour.

More than 100 people have now been confirmed dead and nearly 175 others remain missing.

Clara was attending Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and staff died in the catastrophic flooding.

She has been a “Mystic Girl” since 2021, following in the footsteps of her mother, Suzanne, who camped at the summer getaway in 1991 and 1992.

“My whole childhood is Mystic. I love that camp,” Clara said. “It’s my home away from home, and I love the owners, the Eastlands, like my own family.”

It’s that same feeling of familiarity her twin brother, Nolan, had about Camp La Junta, an all-boys camp he attended for eight summers, about six miles downstream from Mystic. There were no deaths reported at the boys’ camp, but the water was so strong, it sent cabins floating down the river.

Both were just a couple of days into a month-long session when the flash flood hit.

With no cell phones, power or any way to communicate, the twins spent hours wondering if the other was still alive.

“I thought she died,” Nolan said in his first interview since the ordeal. “I thought she was dead. I was really scared.”

“He’s my best friend,” Clara said. “He was truly the only person on my mind.”

When the storm rolled in, Clara, who had fallen ill the day before, was sleeping in the nurse’s station located on higher ground at Mystic.

Nolan was fast asleep in his cabin, which was also located on higher ground at La Junta.

Neither had any idea that the rainstorm was anything more than typical.

“We woke up at like 2 a.m. and our cabin was getting filled with some water,” Nolan said. “But our cabin was at a high point and was a safe point. But the water just kept coming in from multiple areas.”

Thinking it was nothing more than a summer storm, Nolan and his cabinmates went back to sleep.

Meanwhile, at Camp Mystic, Clara woke up to the sound of thunder and counselors and staff talking in the nurse’s station.

She’s not certain of the time because campers are not allowed to have cell phones and she had no watch, but she estimates it was around 2 or 3 a.m.

“A counselor came in and said, ‘The cabin is flooding. It’s going through the closet. It’s coming in really fast.’ I thought it would be an ordinary loud thunderstorm. I never thought it would succumb to the level it did,” Clara said.

By around 4 a.m., Clara recalled Camp Director Britt Eastland coming in to talk.

The staff wasn’t talking directly to her, but Clara said she could hear enough to know the situation was becoming serious.

“Throughout the night, we continue to hear people on the radio about getting the girls up and onto the roof, and about 4 a.m., we lost all power and all water,” Clara said.

Clara said she still didn’t understand the severity of the situation until about 7 a.m. when she made her way to James Hall, a dining hall on higher ground where campers were being evacuated.

“I saw all the little girls wrapped up in blankets, throwing up off the side of the porch. I saw a lot. It was truly a tragedy,” she said.

Clara said that she helped take care of the girls at the camp who had been evacuated to the dining hall.

“That’s when the nurses and I went up to James Hall to go help all the kids that were sick and throwing up and help get them food and clothes and really just take care of them. I put a few BAND-AIDS on some kids, and I held the kids whenever they were crying. I comforted them,” she said.

At La Junta, Nolan woke up at his usual time of 7 a.m. only to find out the overnight storm was anything but typical.

Cabins had been completely washed out, and boys were sharing stories of having to climb to the tops of rafters to survive the rising water.

“We saw the lake and the cabins, and so much was destroyed. It was really bad. Cabins were getting filled with water and fish,” he said.

Nolan was told the campers at his camp were all accounted for, but stories began to circulate about the devastation at nearby Camp Mystic.

All Nolan could think about was Clara.

“At the time, there were like 13 confirmed deaths, and no one knew the people, and I was scared she was one of them,” he said.

Back in Waco, the twins’ parents, Dain and Suzanne, first got word of a threatening storm in a text from Camp La Junta just before 7 a.m. By the time they were alerted of the threat, La Junta had told them all the campers there were safe.

A little before 10 a.m., they received an email from Camp Mystic.

“They sent out an email that said, ‘If you have not been contacted directly, your daughter is accounted for and safe,” Suzanne said.

Suzanne and Dain had not been contacted, so they assumed Clara was safe.

The Sheltons headed for the Hill Country and stopped first at the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, where La Junta was busing the boys.

Nolan was reunited with his parents at about 7:30 p.m. They told him they believed Clara was OK.

The Sheltons then went to Ingram Elementary, which was the reunification center for Mystic parents.

Clara estimated that by around 5 p.m., she started seeing helicopters landing on buildings on the campgrounds.

She said she began evacuating at about 7:30 p.m. and took multiple forms of transportation.

“This truck-boat thing — we were in the bed of it,” she said. “There were trucks, but they also had boats trailered on the back of them. I rode in a boat in the trailer and then we got put in the army trucks, and then we got on buses at the high school.”

As Clara left the campgrounds, the severity hit her fast and hard.

“Nobody really had any clue until we were evacuated and saw the destruction and the first responders rescuing people out of the water, those who did make it and those who didn’t make it,” Clara said as her voice cracked.

Clara didn’t expand on the details of what she saw because she said they are too painful.

She said another unsettling moment came when her bus passed by her brother’s camp, which she boasted she “knew like the back of her hand.”

She said she no longer recognized it.

“When I drove by my brother’s camp, I truly had convinced myself that I would never get to see my brother again,” she said. “It was probably one of the scariest moments of my life.”

Clara began to sing hymns alongside her fellow campers on the bus as they passed Camp La Junta.

A Mystic camp nurse filmed it and posted it online.

“I felt truly connected with the girls around me and in my faith, and I felt that it was just a moment where we could remember all the girls that we lost and really just take a moment for them, and it also helped calm down a lot of the girls around us to be able to hear the voices,” Clara said.

Suzanne, Dain and Nolan anxiously awaited for Clara’s arrival at the school.

When Suzanne watched the video, she immediately recognized Clara’s brunette low bun from behind and she heard her voice.

She knew she was one of the lucky ones, as other parents at the school still hadn’t heard if their children had survived.

“Your heart just broke for them,” Suzanne said. “When your daughter’s name is up on the screen and headed there and they don’t even know if theirs is alive or found. It’s pretty horrific.”

Clara stepped off the bus but wasn’t able to hug her family until she passed through several checkpoints, some for positive identification and others for mental health checks.

The first person she spotted was Nolan.

“I was bawling my eyes out because I truly did think Nolan was gone. I was so relieved when the first person I saw standing in front of the bus whenever I stepped off the bus at the elementary school was my brother, without a scratch,” Clara said.

When Clara was released, she first hugged her mom before running into the arms of her twin.

“I remember my dad and my brother standing behind her and as soon as I saw my brother, my dad thought I was coming to him, but I ran and hugged my brother and cried in his shoulder,” Clara said. “I’ve never felt more love from my brother than I did in that moment.”

“I was so relieved to see her and that she was OK that I almost cried, and I never cry,” Nolan said.

The twins, while thankful to be alive, are quick to acknowledge the pain so many others are experiencing who weren’t as fortunate.

They said they carry with them sadness and guilt.

Clara had just had a conversation with one of the young campers, now confirmed to be dead, just a day before, while they were both out fishing.

“Survivor’s guilt is a real thing,” Clara said. “I just wish I could have done something more to save people.”

This was Nolan’s last year to camp at La Junta before he aged out.

Suzanne and Clara, meanwhile, plan to return to Camp Mystic this weekend to gather Clara’s belongings and meet with cabinmates.

They’ll also pick up Nolan’s things at his camp.

Clara said she has mixed emotions about returning to Camp Mystic this weekend. She doesn’t think she will ever return as a camper to the place she once called her “home away from home,” if or when it ever reopens.

For now, Clara said, she’s focused on the grieving families and remembering a camp that meant so much to so many.

“I just want to remember all the good memories I had there, ” Clara said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”