OREGONIA, Ohio — At the end of their weeklong sleepaway camp, a hush falls over the boisterous kids at YMCA’s Camp Kern as they prepare for a treasured annual tradition: after songs and skits around a bonfire, they write down their favorite memories on slips of paper. Most years, they toss them into the flames, and the ash that rises and then falls over their heads is meant to symbolize the joy they shared.
In 2011, for example, a dozen Girl Scouts were treated for heat-related illnesses at a camp in Connecticut. In 2015, two children were hospitalized with heat exhaustion at a Florida summer camp. And a 15-year-old Boy Scout died in Texas in 2017 after collapsing from heatstroke during a group hike while pursuing a camping merit badge.
“If you’re overheating, you can guarantee that the kids you are watching or playing with or supervising are getting overheated as well,” said Dr. Alison Tothy, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the University of Chicago’s children’s hospital who spends her summers working as a camp doctor in upstate New York. “It’s just something that we’ve now put on our list of reasons why someone might be sick. And I don’t think that we were doing that as much, even a few years ago.
Todd Brinkman, executive director of Camp Kern, said their strategy has generally been to add breaks and indoor sessions, incorporate as many water-based activities as they can and give kids choices.
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