When Jennifer Box began hearing reports of flash flooding in southeastern Missouri, where her two young sons were attending summer camp, she immediately thought back to the catastrophic floods that killed 25 campers in central Texas last July.

Box, who lives in St. Louis, dug up an email her sons’ camp had sent to parents after that disaster to reassure them that they had protocols in place were something similar to ever happen at Camp Taum Sauk in Reynolds County, which sits alongside the Black River.

The National Weather Service called the foot of rain that pounded the region a once-in-a-thousand-years event. At least one person, in nearby Crawford County, died as a result of the flooding.

At the camp, around 2 a.m. Friday, dozens of girls who were still half asleep were evacuated from their cabins in a low-lying area near the river and sent to sleep on the floor of the cafeteria.

As the river rose further and began to creep into the cafeteria, the girls moved to even higher ground on the tennis courts. They kept busy by making bracelets, playing board games and doing other arts and crafts. The boys, whose cabins were on higher ground, remained inside, chatting and listening to the radio. Parents, meanwhile, shared any information they could gather with one another through group messages.

“It was very harrowing,” Box said.

State of Emergency Declared

Over the next 12 hours, Gov. Mike Kehoe of Missouri declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to support rescues. In the afternoon, Black Hawk helicopters airlifted about 200 campers and counselors out of Camp Taum Sauk to a nearby elementary school where parents picked up their children.

“When I first heard we were getting on helicopters, I was kind of scared,” said Everett Box, 11, who was attending Camp Taum Sauk for the third summer. “Then I kind of warmed up to it and was super excited to go on it.”

The evacuation seemed well-organized and more controlled than the frantic response at Camp Mystic in central Texas last year, where a lack of adequate emergency plans left the camp overwhelmed and unprepared to get scores of girls to safety, according to findings from state investigators.

Ultimately, the flood on July 5, 2025, killed 25 campers, two counselors and the camp’s executive director.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Pooja Salhotra and Amy Graff

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