The Storm

I know I have said several times that I am an indoor person.  But long, long ago I was an outdoor person.  I was so much of an outdoor person that for two years I was our local Girl Scout Day Camp Director.  

Before you get too excited, Day Camp was one week long.  But keep in mind that during those 2 years I was also employed at the library and was raising five children aged 5-11.  Yet I stepped up to use my vacation time to lead a week long camp in late June for about 200 girls.  This was in the late 1980's and our camp was out in the country, actually very close to where I buy my eggs.  There was a long building with a kitchen and electricity and, most importantly, a land line, since there were no cell phones. It was right next to the river. We did not use the building for much since it was full of metal bunk bed frames with mattresses and we were a day camp. 

I have lots of camp stories but the one I want to share today is this one.  My day camp had one overnight - Thursday night.  Each "unit" had  to pitch a large tent at the beginning of camp for their supplies and to sit in, for fun and to get out of the rain.  The camp was equipped with "platform tents", a wooden platform with canvas tent walls and peaked roofs, a little up hill from the unit tents, that we used for the overnight.  Some girls preferred to stay in the unit tents in groups for the overnight  

I was always very nervous about supervising all these little girls who belonged to other people, especially in the dark,  and signed up as many adult and teen volunteers as possible. The first year I stayed up ALL night walking between the tents and platforms and just keeping an eye on everything. When some leaders woke up early, I dashed home at 6am, took a shower, drank coffee and drove back for the final day. That was my plan the second year.  

One of the reasons I was so nervous I remembered an event ten years earlier in Oklahoma where two Girl Scouts were abducted from a camp and horribly murdered.  And I never forget a horrible event. 

We had a normal camp day and added in a campers stew for supper.  We made our s'mores and sang some songs and told some stories.  And eventually around 10pm the camp settled down in their sleeping bags and began to fall asleep.  And then the skies opened.  Thunder and lightning and torrential rain. A storm that was not forecast to happen. The tents flooded first, then the platforms. We gathered all the girls and put them in the hall. We put 4 girls on top of each bunk bed unit since the floor was quickly puddled and slippery. The girls were drenched, the bedding was drenching, everything was drenched. 

The Sheriff's department called us during the evacuation to the hall.  We had informed them we would be having an overnight and had asked for extra patrols. As soon as the rain started, they tried to come out and found all the roads leading to the camp flooded. They told us to shelter in place and that they would call us from dispatch every 15 -30 minutes. 

We had flashlights (power was out, but not the phone, thank goodness). Being good Girl Scouts, my leaders had their folders with parent info and took turns calling every single parent to tell them the girls were okay and not to try to come to camp and that we would release campers in the morning starting after breakfast when the road opened.  The sheriff called us every 30 minutes the rest of the night to make sure we were okay. 

Because I am me, I had recently been to a discount store. The store was getting rid of a brand of cheap nail polish and marked it down to 10 cents a bottle.  I had purchased every bottle for slumber parties with my daughters and their friends and had left them in my trunk. I retrieved them and the girls stayed up all night painting fingernails and toenails by flashlight.  

The adults manned the phones, made coffee over campfire and tried to mop the floor. And listened to the river raging outside the back door. 

The rain stopped by the morning. We called all the younger girls who did not sleep over and told them not to come. We made breakfast over campfires and had the girls eat on the bunks so they wouldn't slip and fall. We offered coffee to the deputies who finally made it to camp. My good friend Betsy (God rest her soul) was one of the first ones there. She was a mother of five, too. Five girls. And brought her enormous mis-matched sock basket so that all the campers could put on dry mis-matched socks before putting on their wet shoes. 

Once we fed them, we had the girls hunt for their belongings and put them in piles outdoors so that they could point their parents to which muddy mess was theirs. 

The adults spent the rest of the day scrubbing the camp and drying out what we could.  Officials from the Girl Scout district office paid us a visit and were very blase about the whole thing. Personally I did not sleep for weeks and weeks afterwards.  

The events of last weekend have brought those memories back to me.  What I remember is how the sheriff's department was so intense about keeping in touch with us and worrying about how to reach us.  And that I knew a lot of the farmers in our rural area had CB radios and if we did need to be evacuated, every single one of them would be there with a tractor or spreaders braving the water to get to us. I am not sure if I came up with this or the department mentioned this possibility on a phone call. 

I just can't imagine how this happened to that camp in Texas.  I just can't imagine.  And my heart is broken.