When the news shows major disasters, you often see images of people leaving the area and going to shelters. These shelters are set up with facilities to provide restrooms, showers, water and food. Cots are set up for sleeping spaces, and emergency medical spaces provide needed care. What you don’t see is where the facilities get the extra capacity to house large numbers of people escaping the disaster. Whether the disaster is a fire, flood, earthquake or storm, shelters have to be set up quickly.

When public spaces have to be transformed into shelters, governments will turn to an emergency relief company for support. These companies can provide bathrooms, medical equipment, sleeping arrangements and other things to give people safe shelter while an emergency area is being stabilized.

Emergency shelters are usually set up in large gathering places like gymnasiums or community event spaces. These sites are made to hold a lot of people, but only for the short time of a single event like a concert or basketball game. When they need to hold large numbers of people for multiple days, the facilities can get overwhelmed. When this happens, not only does the space become dirty and uncomfortable, but these conditions can cause disease to spread through the housed people. This only worsens the initial emergency, using more medical resources.

Using an emergency relief company helps to provide clean and safe facilities so more people can stay at the shelter for a long time safely. Making sure there are enough restrooms, clean showers and safe food handling spaces makes life easier in a challenging time, but also keeps people healthy when they are in a scary situation.

While everyday living accommodations are needed during an emergency, often there are additional injuries associated with major disasters that can easily overwhelm local hospitals. Portable medical facilities can help take up the slack, and these can be set up near the disaster area, shortening the time it takes to transport the injured to life-saving care. An emergency relief company can bring these resources into place quickly, meaning that when medical professionals arrive they can get right to work.

While large-scale emergencies can cause significant harm to people, there are ways to make the best of a bad situation. One way is to provide a clean safe place for people to get away from the danger. Keeping them warm, fed, clean and safe keeps the disaster from getting worse, and starts the process of recovery.