I've had a whirl-wind week, and am actually on vacation, sort of, at the family beach house - just taking a break from my house and spending a little time on the beach. That is the big reason I've not gotten around to posting this story yet.
I guess the other part of why I hadn't posted this yet is that since I'm pretty involved in Scouting, this is an issue I've talked about with my "scouting" friends and on some scouting email lists - in fact, this story has accounted for much of my email traffic received in the last week, dominating the traffic on the Scouting listservs I'm on.
Here is the story, paraphrased as best as I can tell it. This information has been gathered from email listservs as well as Broadcast media. All is paraphrased. Additionally, I've tried to explain a lot of the teminology and simplified as best as I can.
The scouts were down at the camp for a week-long Youth Leader Training (NYLT) progam before the summer camp season started. NYLT, a national curriculum for how to train youth leaders, can be run as either a week-long course or 2 long weekends. It is targeted to experienced scouts (1st class or above, 13+) and is led by older scouts with adult assistance. On Wedensday, the course staff was aware of the strong potential for severe weather. They were monitoring the storm using weather radio. Per CNN - After the tornado was seen, the camp's alarm was sounded and scouts moved to "hard cover". In this case, Hard Cover was 4 separate, smaller structures, as opposed to the huge dining hall at my camp. Some scouts were away from the structures and did not make it in time. In at least 1 of the structures, the stone fireplace was demolished. The stone fireplace(s) has/have been mentioned several times regarding injuries and deaths.
There have been 4 scouts killed (2 13 y/o, 2 14 y/o), as well as about 50 injured.
After the storm went through, the scouts in the camp went into action and started working on both First Aid and getting outside help into the camp.
These scouts were slightly older and more experienced, and it is likely that almost all had a fair amount of Boy Scout first aid training... likely including the First Aid merit Badge. There also an additional badge on top of the First Aid merit badge called "Emergency Preparedness" which actually covers basic disaster management, including triage.
I've also read news reports that say some of the Scouts (possibly some of the adults) accessed chain saws and removed dead trees from the access road to the camp.
The tornado has been classified as an EF-3:
EF-3 - Severe damage. Entire stories of well-constructed houses destroyed; severe damage to large buildings such as shopping malls; trains overturned; trees debarked; heavy cars lifted off the ground and thrown; structures with weak foundations blown away some distance.
From Wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_Scale
There is a lot of information out there now, and I'm sure a LOT more will be coming in the near future.
In my personal opinion, this is a prime example of why the Boy Scout program works. The other YOUTH participants were preforming first aid and acting as the local equipment of a "CERT" team. They did what they could do for treatment before Fire and EMS arrived.
