Beneath the shadow of a natural disaster, training acts as the compass to prepare us for the worst of what nature has to offer. Over the years, Western Shelter has provided multiple opportunities for end users to receive training in disaster response solutions. Last month, we traveled down to Bossier City, Louisiana, to provide VISN 16 with training on how to prepare them for hurricane season.

In May, several members of our team traveled to eastern Africa to set-up a new Level II Field Hospital. The trip involved training end users on deployment and operation of this mixed container and shelter based facility, and concluded with a mass casualty drill.

The Polaris Project has been researching the global climate since 2008, and each year prior to 2017 traveled to the Siberian Arctic. Last year, the project relocated to the Yukon River Delta in Alaska and began its use of Western Shelters. The group is composed of several researchers from the Woods Hole Research Center and students from various universities around the country. The group lives on site for two weeks, spending days measuring the amount of ancient carbon locked in the soil.

Providing complete, turnkey solutions is one of our specialties. Western Shelter designs and produces custom camps fit to serve our customers’ needs, large and small. A great example of a complete camp solution recently was sent to the Nuevo León Protección Civil team in Monterrey, Mexico.

Every fire season, Western Shelters can be seen dotting the landscape around the western states. We got our start as a business providing our shelters to fire camps in the Pacific Northwest, and this week we had the opportunity to visit one of those camps. 

While the media coverage has gone away, the recovery process in Puerto Rico is far from over. Many medical facilities were damaged or rendered inoperable by Hurricane Maria, creating dangerous gaps in the island's healthcare system.

Fire season always brings us back to our roots here at Western Shelter. The company was founded in 1988 to offer a more sustainable solution for wildland fire camps. While we have grown significantly since then, protecting firefighters and incident commanders is still a core component of our mission.