A working camp EAP includes incident-specific protocols (medical, lost camper, water, weather, intruder, transportation), named roles and responsibilities for your leadership and counselors, parent and authority communication templates, site maps, evacuation and shelter-in-place routes, and a post-incident review framework. Most importantly, it should be written in plain language and short enough that counselors can actually use it under pressure — not a 200-page document no one opens.

At minimum, every camp should run full emergency and lost-camper training during staff onboarding before opening day, with tabletop refreshers at mid-season and after any real incident. Aquatic, medical, and lost-camper drills benefit from being run live — not just reviewed — so staff have muscle memory for the first minutes of a response.

Start the clock, announce the hasty search on radio with the camper's name, description, and last known location, and immediately assign staff to the highest-risk areas first: any water, the perimeter, and parking/vehicle areas. Designate one person as incident commander — that role decides when the hasty search transitions to coordinated zone search, when parents are notified, and when to escalate to 911.

The plans look different, but the bar is the same. Day camps face fewer overnight and wilderness risks, but they face higher transportation, pickup, and custody risks. A custody incident, an allergic reaction at lunch, or a missing camper at a public field trip location all require the same kind of rehearsed response as an overnight emergency.

When something happens at camp, your director doesn't need a call center — they need an experienced emergency professional on the phone in minutes. Our hotline connects your leadership directly to a real safety expert who can help stabilize the situation, advise on next steps, coordinate with 911 if needed, and follow through on parent communication and documentation. It's the piece that turns a plan on paper into real-time support.