OSCEOLA, Mo. - Scouts are safe, but an Boy Scout adult leader from a Kansas City-area troop was transported to a local hospital after storms hit their campsite near Osceola.
More than 1,500 scouts and leaders were staying on the Bartle Scout Reservation. The scouts had just arrived Monday. Then, around 4:30 a.m., officials say the storm came through and caused some damage.
The camp leader was injured when a tree fell into a cabin in which he was staying. Mark Brayer, the director of support services with the Heart of America Council Boy Scouts of America, says the leader was standing in the doorway when the tree fell on him.
At first the leader thought he broke his leg. Fortunately on Tuesday afternoon, he was released from the hospital with just severe bruising.
This just over a year after a tornado killed four boy scouts at a camp in western Iowa.
Brayer says their risk management committee evaluated their plan and have spent the last year engineering new hazardous weather shelters. Those shelters will be installed after this camp season ends this summer.
Brayer says their current hazardous weather system has been used for 80 years with no fatalities.
"But we can always get better and make things safer," Brayer says. "And that is what we're in the process of doing."
