Texas Board of Nursing has suspended the nursing license of Mary Liz Eastland, accusing her of failing to assist children and staff during the catastrophic floods that devastated Camp Mystic last year.<\/p>\n
The emergency order, signed by Texas Board of Nursing Executive Director Kristin Benton, stated that Eastland\u2019s actions during the July 4 flooding posed a \u201ccontinuing and imminent threat to public welfare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Camp Mystic, a longtime Christian girls\u2019 summer camp in Hunt, suffered a tragic disaster when severe flooding along the Guadalupe River killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors. Eastland\u2019s father-in-law, camp owner Richard Eastland, also died during the flooding.<\/p>\n
According to the board\u2019s findings, Eastland abandoned campers and staff by evacuating herself and her children to higher ground without providing instructions or assistance to others trapped in the camp\u2019s low-lying areas.<\/p>\n
Court testimony previously revealed that Eastland, who served as the camp\u2019s medical officer, never attempted to contact or warn staff and campers closest to the rising floodwaters as conditions rapidly worsened before dawn.<\/p>\n
The suspension marks one of the first major state actions taken against members of the Eastland family since the deadly flood disaster.<\/p>\n
Eastland\u2019s attorney, Joshua Fiveson, criticized the board\u2019s decision, calling it \u201cpremature punishment.\u201d He argued the nursing board acted with less than 24 hours\u2019 notice before the hearing and without a complete investigation or testimony process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a sad day for Mrs. Eastland as well as every licensed nurse in Texas,\u201d Fiveson said.<\/p>\n
The board is expected to issue a final ruling on Eastland\u2019s nursing license within the next two months.<\/p>\n
The Eastland family has faced mounting criticism from victims\u2019 families and Texas lawmakers in the months following the disaster. Several lawsuits have been filed against the camp\u2019s ownership, while Camp Mystic recently canceled plans to reopen this summer amid public outrage.<\/p>\n
Legislative hearings held in April highlighted serious concerns about the camp\u2019s emergency preparedness, including limited flood evacuation planning, poorly trained staff and missed opportunities to move campers away from danger before the river overflowed.<\/p>\n
During testimony, Eastland described how she escaped floodwaters with her children after water entered their home and shattered a window. She later joined other staff members in conducting survivor head counts but said the floodwaters prevented access to cabins closest to the river.<\/p>\n
When questioned about why she did not alert additional medical personnel or evacuation staff before the situation escalated, Eastland acknowledged that more assistance \u201cmaybe\u201d could have helped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Texas Board of Nursing has suspended the nursing license of Mary Liz Eastland, accusing her of failing to assist children and staff during the catastrophic floods that devastated Camp Mystic last year. The emergency order, signed by Texas Board of Nursing Executive Director Kristin Benton, stated that Eastland\u2019s actions during the July 4 flooding posed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":18519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[3672,25026,25016,25029,25022,25019,25030,25021,25024,25018,25028,25025,25020,25017,25027,25023],"class_list":["post-18517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-amat","tag-camp-mystic-evacuation-failures","tag-camp-mystic-flood","tag-camp-mystic-investigation","tag-camp-mystic-lawsuit","tag-camp-mystic-nursing-license","tag-flood-emergency-response","tag-guadalupe-river-flooding","tag-hunt-texas-flood","tag-mary-liz-eastland","tag-nursing-license-suspension","tag-richard-eastland","tag-texas-board-of-nursing","tag-texas-flood-tragedy","tag-texas-flood-victims","tag-texas-summer-camp-disaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swifteradio.com\/update\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}