The climate crisis is bringing flash floods, droughts, and disasters that are reshaping the meaning of childhood summers.
On the first morning of camp last week, my daughter and I were quieter than usual during the 45-minute drive. We chose this camp all the way out in Calabasas so that she could spend the whole week in nature. While we loved the fashion camp she had just attended in the urban East Hollywood neighborhood a few weeks earlier, being outside amid nature’s many mysteries has always felt like a critical summer rite of passage.
For years, she attended a similar outdoor camp in Altadena. It spanned more than 50 acres in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest. Her tiny little hand would squeeze mine as we walked from our home down the hill up to the camp entrance a few blocks away. She made lanyards and God’s eyes, hiked into the forest, and harvested vegetables from the garden. That camp, which had served families like ours for more than four decades, was destroyed in the January Eaton fire. My daughter’s dad also lost his home nearby.
This camp week (and the arduous round-trip drive) was partly a way for her to heal from that loss in January, to forgive nature for that fiery blaze that forced my daughter and her dad to evacuate quickly, leaving, and then losing everything they couldn’t pack into his car. This week, out among the coastal live oaks, sagebrush, and big sky, would help repair that rift with nature my daughter felt since January, I thought. I hoped.
That morning, though, as we made our way down the 101, the news out of Texas had us at a loss for words. It was horrifying: 27 people — mostly children — died in a flash flood that swept through a summer camp in Kerr County. A river had surged beyond its banks after unprecedented rains and overtook the cabins before they could escape.
As we listened to the news, I could see my daughter was uneasy, flashing back to the fire evacuation in January. I told my daughter what most parents would say. That what happened in Texas was tragic and unimaginable, but indeed, a fluke accident. Emergency systems failed. They didn’t have enough notice. I told her that freak accidents like that are extremely rare, and her camp, far from rivers, was a safe place.
Two days later, though, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
An unthinkable tragedy: during the final group circle on the third day of camp, a massive 25-foot branch suddenly broke from the tree sheltering the campers and counselors beneath it. An eight-year-old boy was struck and killed. Several others were injured, some critically. My daughter saw it all. She sat on the outer edge of the circle, furthest from the tree trunk and with the clearest view of the falling limb. As she heard the branch cracking, she jumped and ran, terrified. She was then in a war zone: the elderly camp owner lay bleeding, disoriented, and concussed. She saw the efforts to save the young boy who wouldn’t make it. A young girl, her head bleeding, asked my sobbing daughter what she should do. Parents, arriving for pickup, were instead frantically looking for their children.
There was no warning that afternoon, but there were signs. The tree had dropped another large branch a week before this incident. In the aftermath, the tree had been assessed as healthy, parents were told. But even “healthy” trees can be pushed to their limits by excessive drought with little warning — California has been in a drought since 2020. According to the U.S. Forest Service, extreme heat and prolonged water scarcity compromise the internal structure of trees, making them more susceptible to sudden limb drop — a phenomenon where large branches fall without warning, even in the absence of wind. A 2024 study in Forest Ecology and Management found that drought-stressed trees exhibit reduced elasticity, slower growth, and declining biomass — all of which can lead to structural failure.
This wasn’t an accident in the traditional sense. It was the predictable outcome of a climate system in distress. And it was, unbelievably, the second time this year that my daughter has faced the consequences of climate change.
In January, as high winds tore through Los Angeles — the Palisades fire already ablaze some 30 miles away — my daughter watched a wall of orange flames heading down from the Angeles National Forest toward her father’s Altadena home as they sped away with little more than the clothes on their backs. It was one of the earliest and most destructive wildfires of the season. Fueled by dry vegetation from a rain-heavy winter followed by a record-breaking dry spell, the fire, kicked up by wind gusts exceeding 70 mph, tore through the foothill neighborhoods and forced thousands to evacuate. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain called it a hallmark of California’s emerging pattern of “hydroclimate whiplash” — in which brief periods of intense precipitation are followed by long stretches of intense heat and aridity.
The World Health Organization reports that extreme heat events are rising, increasing risks of illness and death for vulnerable groups. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency confirms a steady increase in the frequency of extreme summer temperatures and heat waves, while cold spells decline.
And now, for the second time this year, my daughter has been a victim of climate change. She is 11 years old.
And she is far from alone.
Around the world, climate change is making heat waves longer, hotter, and more dangerous. In 2022, an extreme heatwave swept across India and Pakistan — scientists from the World Weather Attribution project estimate it was made about 30 times more likely and approximately 1 °C hotter due to human-caused climate change. More recently, in May 2024, northern India endured another devastating heatwave linked to more than 700 deaths.
Climate change also intensified the torrential rainfall that caused the Guadalupe River to surge dramatically at Camp Mystic, triggering the catastrophic flash flood that killed the campers and counselors. A powerful storm system fed by moisture remnants from Tropical Storm Barry and the Pacific delivered the equivalent of four months’ worth of rain over just a few hours. The Guadalupe River rose an astounding 26 to 30 feet within about 45 minutes, overwhelming early warning systems and sweeping away cabins at the riverside camp.
Human-driven warming has made extreme downpours like these more intense; studies comparing post‑1986 weather to earlier decades found such storms are approximately seven percent wetter than they would have been without climate change. A record-breaking rainfall event — amplified by a hotter, moisture-laden atmosphere — sent the river raging into Camp Mystic. The flood rushed through cabins before staff could evacuate in time.
Record storms in 2021 brought floods to Europe that destroyed homes that had stood for centuries; the floods caused landslides in Asia and flooded subways throughout China.
Longer dry periods are now interrupted by these sudden, intense downpours. Every 1°F increase in warming adds four percent more moisture, increasing the likelihood of intense rain events linked to flash floods. NOAA’s summer 2025 outlook also points to wetter-than-average conditions, including “above-normal” hurricane season for the East Coast.
We routinely prepare our kids for unlikely events at school: fire drills, earthquake drills, even “bad guy” drills are all part of the preparedness schedule these days. But what about at summer camp? These extreme weather events and their impact on the environment are rapidly changing the outdoor world where many of our children spend their summers. Are we prepared? Camp Mystic’s owner had reportedly warned of the risk of devastating floods for years, but nothing was done. My daughter’s summer camp circled the children under that tree even after it had suddenly dropped a branch the week before — a tell-tale sign it’s in distress from drought.
What does it say about our readiness if a child in Los Angeles County — arguably one of the more resource-rich regions in the world — can be directly affected by the climate crisis twice in a matter of months? What does that mean for children in Bangladesh, or the Sahel, or the drought-burdened Central Valley? According to UNICEF, more than 1 billion children globally are already at “extremely high risk” from the impacts of climate change, including heatwaves, air pollution, flooding, and water scarcity. That’s nearly half of all the children in the world who are now facing displacement, injury, and even death due to our failure to slow climate change.
“For the first time, we have a complete picture of where and how children are vulnerable to climate change, and that picture is almost unimaginably dire. Climate and environmental shocks are undermining the complete spectrum of children’s rights, from access to clean air, food and safe water; to education, housing, freedom from exploitation, and even their right to survive. Virtually no child’s life will be unaffected,” Henrietta Fore, former UNICEF Executive Director, said in 2021, noting “the climate crisis is a child’s rights crisis.”
In Los Angeles, camps are required to hold permits, meet basic safety standards, and maintain certifications in CPR and lifeguarding. But there is no mandate to assess environmental risk. No requirement for tree inspections by certified arborists. No wildfire evacuation drills. And no required pause in operations after a child dies from a tragedy like this. Parents are left with no way to track risk.
Are we really okay with that?
Summer camps are more than daycare. They are where many children first experience freedom, independence, and develop a meaningful relationship with nature. But these formative spaces depend on physical safety. And safety, in 2025, must mean resilience to a warming, increasingly volatile climate.
We need updated regulations, enforced transparency, and shared data. We need to understand which trees are safe and which are not, where wildfire risks are greatest, and yes, even in Los Angeles, where flooding could strike without warning. And we need to acknowledge that climate change has, indeed, changed the stakes. Climate change is expanding the habitats of invasive species like mosquitoes, which now thrive in regions that were previously too cool or dry, increasing the spread of diseases such as dengue and malaria. Rising temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels also boost pollen production and extend allergy seasons, while creating conditions that elevate wildfire smoke and mold risk — further compounding the outdoor health threats our summer camps face.
This year, my daughter has seen nature in crisis and felt its consequences firsthand. Camp should help build her confidence, not ask her to be at the front lines calling for climate policy, or carrying a lifetime of trauma. As these risks evolve, our systems must evolve with them. And when climate change comes for our kids, the question is no longer whether we believe it’s real. The question is whether we’re willing to act like it is.
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