Western Shelter Systems (Western) is teaming up with local non-profit shelter provider, Community Supported Shelters (CSS), to improve the design of the homegrown Conestoga Hut. The Conestoga Hut Micro-Shelter is a quick shelter option for individuals and couples who are experiencing homelessness. The Hut is designed as a hard-shelled, insulated tent structure that can be built with a group of a few volunteers with a wide range of construction experience.
At Western Shelter, we partner with response and recovery experts from across the globe to discuss how to better protect against and recover from devastating natural disasters. We have worked diligently across our company’s 30+ year history to develop and improve upon the products we make to serve responders with both common and tailored capabilities.
Founded in 1988 to offer a more sustainable solution for wildland fire camps, Western Shelter has always viewed Spring as the start of the U.S. Fire Season and a reason to refocus on our purpose and our customers.
While we have grown significantly since then, protecting firefighters and incident commanders remains at the core of our mission.
The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) issued their initial outlook for the 2022 Spring/early Summer, forecasting above normal fire potential for the southern plains and southeast, with a concerned look at drought conditions in the West, the Plains, and Texas. February has already seen Fire activity increase, with the year-to-date number of fires and acres burned for the US at nearly double the 10-year average.
At Western Shelter, we’ve been preparing all winter for this scenario, and we’re ready to make sure you have the necessary resources at your disposal when you’re called to action.
We had the privilege of attending the Natural Disasters Expo in Miami Beach, FL. We joined over 350 worldwide disaster response and recovery experts to discuss how to better align with agencies and businesses to protect against and recover from natural disasters across the globe. The Expo focused on storms (particularly hurricanes and tornados), earthquakes, heat & fire, and floods. From Western Shelter’s perspective, we support responders to these different disasters with both common and tailored capabilities to meet their needs.
Over the last year, Cappy International has worked hard to feature the capabilities of Western Shelter throughout Japan. They’ve set-up and displayed our shelter systems at tradeshows such as the National Ambulance Crew Symposium in Sendai, the Annual Meeting of Japan Association for Disaster Medicine, International Healthcare Engineering Exhibition (HOSPEX), along with a deployment demonstration during the Disaster Health Services winter training event. Cappy International has secured space for these shows in 2022 and will continue to support our efforts in responding proactively to solutions within the disaster response and medical community.
The work doesn’t stop when the weather gets colder. Deployments in late fall and throughout winter require extra precautions be taken to ensure that both staff and equipment operate efficiently and safely.
We’ve put together this list of cold weather deployment tips. Have any good ones that aren’t covered in this post? Please let us know, so we can share.
