KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Boy Scouts of America runs several of the largest camps in the Kansas City area, serving 30,000 kids annually across 19 KC-area counties.
Right now, there are more than 2,000 kids camping in the woods at Camp Bartle in Osceola, Missouri, and Camp Naish in Bonner Springs, Kansas. There's a lot going on behind the scenes to keep them safe.
"The Boy Scouts have a very strict, formal safety plan that we follow,” said Alan Sanders, director of support services with the Heart of America Council, BSA.
Mandatory training is where it begins. Every staff member is trained on how to handle severe weather and how to extract campers if the weather turns dangerous.
“It talks about tornadoes, flash floods, high winds, where to build camps," he said. "It talks about the preplanning for communication. We do tornado drills with our shelters on day one every time camp opens.”
The camps have built new storm shelters and pavilions over the last few years for storms or rain.
“We’ve even recently partnered with St. Clair County, with FEMA, and we now have three brand-new tornado sirens that we can use as a public address system at our scout reservation," Sanders said. "[They] went in about two months ago.”
Beyond the physical prep work, Sanders explained the partnerships that help with weather predictions and alerts at camp.
“We’ve even built some relationships in with NOAA... We talk to the NOAA forecasters out of Springfield a couple of times a year," he said.
There's an in-house element, too. Weather at both Naish and Bartle is monitored 24/7 by a staffer dedicated to keeping an eye on the weather radar.
“We actually hire somebody that is up all night long, basically sundown to sun up, who is watching the weather for us," Sanders said. "Even just last night, with those storms that moved through, he was watching it on TV, he was watching it on the radar. He was communicating with both properties.”
This summer alone, 10,000 kids will camp out in the woods, with these protocols keeping them safe.
—
KSHB 41 reporter Grant Stephens covers stories involving downtown Kansas City, Missouri, up to North Kansas City. Share your story idea with Grant.
