My daughter was a Mystic camper several years ago and stayed in one of the cabins (Bumble Inn) that lost all of the girls and counselors. If you look at the map showing the location of the cabins (white outline), the two furthest to the northwest are Bumble Inn and I think the other is Twins I and II. The rest of the cabins are in a line running northeast to southwest. Those cabins are right up against a large hill (dark gray color). So, I am thinking the girls in those cabins were able to get out the back windows and immediately climb up hill to safety. Where as the cabins further away from the hill (Bumble Inn, Twins I and II, others?) had no where to escape and were quickly surrounded by water. I have not heard what other cabins besides Bumble Inn took the most losses, but I think I read somewhere that Twins was one of the ones Dick Eastland was trying to evacuate when he was swept away with girls in his vehicle.
It's absolutely no excuse but unfortunately I would guess the second quote (Hook's) might be pretty accurate. The Eastlands and previous family members have owned this camp for close to 100 years, obviously they had never seen anything of this magnitude.
I mentioned in a post earlier in this thread, that all the facilities (dining hall, infirmary, activities building, etc..) are all down below in the "flats" area of the camp where the younger girls cabins are located. And the older campers are on Senior Hill which is a bit of steep hike for the younger girls and is more suited for the older campers. So I'm fairly certain proximity to facilities and ease of access are the main reason for why the young girls were located in the flats.
One other thing I noticed, the valley the river runs in, along the camp "pinches in" against the large hill to the southeast, on the far east side of the camp area, creating a kind of funnel. With the amount of water in this flood, I am betting that narrowing might have caused the flood water to back up and rise even higher than the max river crest.
In a sick twist of irony the name of the infirmary building is "Heaven Can Wait".
This whole thing is just shattering. I have met some of the people who were lost and one of my nieces friends lost her daughter who was at Camp Mystic and has not been recovered to date.