What Happens If A Camper Goes Missing At A Residential Summer Camp?

Many summer camps have faced the problem of children going missing during the day for any number of reasons, but in almost all cases, the camper is very quickly found.

Each camp has its own policy to deal with missing campers. It is, however, very common for a camp to use its PA system to summon all support staff to report to the office immediately in order to begin looking for the child. Most camps will not announce over the PA system that someone has gone missing and everyone will remain as calm as possible. If the camper is not found within a set amount of time (usually within 5 minutes), a second announcement would follow which would ask all available staff to report to the office. This means that if there is more than one staff member with each group of campers, the extra staff would be sent to the office and would then be dispatched to different locations in order to look for the child.

Once the child is found, the successful staff member will contact the office via a walkie-talkie and the search will be called off. If the child is not found on camp grounds within about 10 minutes, the local police will usually be called.