Tragedy in Iowa

I really didn’t intend to make this a blog about current events, unless they were funny, unusual, or otherwise just plain unique, but I can’t let this one slide.

Wednesday night, a group of Boy Scouts were killed at their summer camp in Iowa. I also noticed that Blog d’Ellison covered this event as well.

I’ve stated before that I’m an assistant to a small group of 11-year old Boy Scouts. For blogging purposes, I call them the Top Gun crew (yes, we have an Iceman, Slider, Maverick, and Goose). Being a close-knit group I love these kids to death and would be devastated beyond any point of sanity were anything like that to happen to them, especially on my watch. I have no idea what the parents of the boys who died are going through, but it mustn’t be pretty. And the leaders too must be going through all kinds of hell and guilt, given that this happened on their watch. I know I would.

I also wonder, did they have any kind of plan in case something like this happened? Huge tornadoes are not uncommon in Iowa, should there have been a safe place for the kids to go? Should large campsites in areas vunlerable to tornadoes and severe storms have some sort of underground shelter constructed? Should they have cancelled the outing and found shelter when it became apparent that severe weather was on the way? I do recall reading that they had weather radios, so they must have known something was coming. As a matter of fact, I just emailed my leader asking him if perhaps we should draw up an emergency plan of our own with our boys in case something like this ever happened to us.

My deepest sympathies and condolences go out to all the families affected by this tragedy.

~ by The Real Dave on June 13, 2008.