OUT OF THE ELEMENTS

KNOWING HOW TO BUILD A SHELTER IS GOOD. FINDING ONE READY-MADE IS BETTER

- CHRISTOPHER NYERGES

An emergency shelter is any way to get out of the rain, cold, or snow so you don't go into hypothermia and loose the ability to think clearly and to perform necessary tasks.

And an "emergency" is just that some sudden and unexpected event that forces you to take cover.

Your emergency shelters will fall into one of two categories:

1 Those that are ready to occupy (more or less).

2 Those that you have to construct from square one.

This latter category fills lots of space on YouTube and TV, by those who show you a fantastic little log or clay house that they built, including a fireplace and a window. It takes you just 30 minutes to watch it while sitting in front of your computer, so you don't realize that these exquisite wilderness shelters are NOT “emergency shelters." Why? Most of them take days, if not weeks, to construct, and their construction necessitates lots of skills, as well as a ready supply of the building materials.

Even if you have the skills, and the materials, in a genuine emergency where you need a shelter, you want something that is ready NOW, or pretty close to NOW.

(We'll talk about shelters that you build from scratch another time.)

One of the bits of advice that I tell my students is that when they are hiking in an area, make a sport of trying to identify possible emergency shelters. Include your children, who love such adventurous activities.

"Hey, look at that old storage shack! I'll bet we could get out of the rain in that if we ever had to."

The shelters that are ready to occupy can be manmade, or they can be natural. Let's look at some of the possibilities, keeping in mind that if you find yourself in a genuine emergency, you should use whatever is available and expedient to your situation.