Emergency & Staffing Policies

Headwaters Science Institute is committed to maintaining the highest safety and security standards for our programs. When your children are in our care, you can trust that they are safe.

All employees and contractors are background checked before they start working with us. We use a national-level background check program called National Crime Search (nationalcrimesearch.com) that searches all states and county records for any criminal records, sex & violent offenders, and includes a terrorist search.
Our staff members are all first-aid and CPR certified. Some are Wilderness First Responder certified as well.

We have a safety plan for every field site we use and know where the nearest fire station is located. We are never more than a few minutes walk to the nearest road.
In the unlikely event of an emergency, we always work in areas that are easily served by 911. Our field site on Donner Summit is less than 2 miles from the nearest fire station with full-time EMT services and the hospital is a short 10-minute ride away.

Wildfire and Smoke/Air Quality Policy: In the event of smoky conditions, Headwaters will evaluate air quality each morning by 7:00 AM and determine whether programs can safely proceed, need to be modified, or must be canceled. Headwaters will not cancel an entire week of camp or an entire program due to smoke unless there is an evacuation order or conditions make safe operation impossible. Our full Cancellation, Withdrawal, and Smoke/Air Quality Police can be found here.