Summer camps feel the heat and adapt - The Boston Globe

Summer camps are forced to adapt to climate change

For nearly a century, the land inhabited by Kingsley Pines Camp in Maine has provided a respite from steamy urban summers, with its crystal-clear lake and inviting woods.

Now, it seems, the heat has caught up with Kingsley Pines. Recently the camp installed ceiling fans for the first time in a few of its cabins before campers began arriving. Director Dan Emmons wonders if adding the fans — and the prospect of installing air conditioners in the future — would spoil the rugged and “unplugged” feel of the camp for boys and girls in rural Raymond, some 130 miles north of Boston.

“At what point does it become about safety?” Emmons asked in a phone interview. “I don’t know what that point is, but it could be coming faster than I think.”

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Kingsley Pines is part of a small but growing group of outdoorsy summer camps grappling with the effects of extreme heat and rains, which are associated with climate change. Some are adding misting stations to keep campers cool and shoring up lake dams to prevent flooding from more-frequent rainstorms. Others are enhancing emergency training for keeping campers safe in the event of severe weather.

The average summer temperature across New England has increased 1.5 degrees to 3.5 degrees since 1970, according to the nonprofit Climate Central. Last month, a heat wave shattered records from Boston to Bangor.

“Many New England communities are ill-equipped to deal with these stronger heat waves,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, in Falmouth, Mass. “As long as we continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, we’ll see our summers become even more uncomfortable and unhealthy.”

It’s little wonder that some camp operators are speaking of adaption and climate resiliency as they open their doors to a fresh crop of 8-to-17-year-olds. There are some 1,975 camps (day and overnight) in the region, according to the American Camp Association, New England.

The industry employs thousands of seasonal staffers and generates over $6 billion in total economic impact, the association says. While severe weather presents challenges, said Michele Rowcliffe, the group’s executive director, “We’re survivors, and we know how to train our camps to be ready for anything.”

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Emmons, who has been working at Kingsley Pines for two decades, says he has altered how he prepares his staff to deal with extreme weather, from 2023′s downpours to the record heat last month. Increasingly, technology’s a key operational aide. Instead of using a storm radio to help prepare for emergencies, he uses his smartphone to monitor federal and state agencies’ alerts about heat indexes, dangerous air quality, or possible lightning strikes.

In Vermont, camps sustained heavy damage in last July’s catastrophic flooding, requiring expensive repairs and prompting new approaches to dealing with such threats. Disaster revisited Vermont last week as remnants of Hurricane Beryl dumped heavy rain on the state, knocking out bridges and cutting off towns, and retraumatizing areas still recovering from the damage that hit a year ago.

At Camp Killooleet in Hancock, Vt., run by Kate Seeger and her husband, Dean Spencer, many buildings and roadways in the area were destroyed last summer. But they were lucky to only lose a footbridge at their idyllic camp, in the Green Mountains region. They’ve also rebuilt a damaged driveway and a dam on a private lake.

“Part of what drives us forward is rethinking about where we build things and what we build, thinking about construction practices and maybe ditching and drainage,” said Spencer, whose wife’s parents bought the camp in 1949.

Activities for campers had to be altered last summer. They were unable to use their lake for almost a week because of silt, and temporarily suspended their horseback riding program. “We couldn’t camp out because you either couldn’t get to the campground or it was under water or roads were closed,” he said. “So we frantically retooled and figured out some other activities and hikes.”

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Vermont’s Farm & Wilderness, which runs summer camps in Plymouth, is already following a nature-reliant blueprint. But it was near the flooding epicenter last July and saw significant runoff that took days to clear. So the camps found alternate water-sources and adapted their playbook. When a bridge went out, preventing food delivery trucks from reaching them, they had enough essential supplies in reserve.

“Our staff has program continuity plans designed to respond to change quickly,” said executive director Frances McLaughlin.

For campers, being tripped off the grid isn’t a worry because their cabins are three-sided, nestled into the hillside, with one side exposed to nature. Neither the showers nor toilets are electrified.

“We live by bells and that’s hard, but because everyone’s doing it, it’s amazing how quickly it becomes okay,” said McLaughlin. “Campers come here to be close to the land, no matter how corny that sounds. You can have your smartwatch on until it runs out of power and there’s no place for you to charge it.”

Still, its business team needs electricity to run the Internet and data-systems, as do staffers who communicate with parents of campers. It can now perform those functions from alternate urban hubs in the event of an outage, she noted.

Boston’s Camp Harbor View, a day camp on Long Island, has installed tents and misting stations and planted more shade trees to keep campers cool. It has also modified its schedule to give its 1,100 campers, from various Boston neighborhoods, greater access to waterfront sports and the pool on especially hot days.

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“Given that we’re isolated on an island, when there’re storms or high winds it could be a challenge,” said Lisa Fortenberry, who helps coordinate with city services to keep campers safe. It’s working closely with Stone Living Lab, a climate resiliency organization, to identify natural measures to address climate change on the island.

“We want to ensure the island’s here for young people in perpetuity,” Fortenberry added.

Suchita Nayar can be reached at suchita.nayar@globe.com.