Emergency tents. What is needed?

Key features of an emergency tent.

An emergency tent is not just an accesory in the emergency early response.

Emergency teams are the key factor for an effective emergency operation and when first response emergency teams reach the ground zero area they usually do not count with  a nice place to stay.

Many times emergency area has not secure buildings to establish the emergency command posts or the emergency teams shelters so, reliable tents are needed.

The first 72 hours in an emergency response are key to rescue the victims that may remain still alive, for instance after an eartquake strikes. 72 hours is not much time available therefore any minute saved in preparedness is crucial to have as much time as possible to devote to the rescue tasks.

When emergency teams reach the intervention area one of the first things they need to do is to organize their own field camp and for that they need solid and useful housing structures, many times these structures are tents. The tents used shouldn't be an obstacle for the team or annoying part of their missions. For this reason it is advisable to select carefully the tents used for the field camp, the field command post or the field hospital.

A tent that is light an easy to deploy is a must, but also a non frequently found feature. Is quite advisable for the tents, they shoud be suitable to deploy on any terrain or soil, because nobody knows previously where the emergency is going to arise and the ground site available maybe a broken street, a land near the emergency area or a concrete soil area at an airport surrounding. Not always is possible to nail down the pegs many tents have in order to install their guy-ropes, so a tent with a selfstanding structure is highly recommendable.

Another key factor for tents is their inner space: it shouldn't be asked to the emergency teams to crawl on all fours into their tents after an extenuating 24/48 h working day, it should be given to them tents with space enough to stand up and to move freely inside without obstacles.

The tents used by the team should also be modular enough in order to permit constructing the needed field shelter structure that allows the most effective emergency response.


It cannot be known in advance how long the team is going to be there neither if the climate of the emergency site will be hot or cold, so the tents should have some thermal isolation. It shouldn't be forget that after their hard work of rescuing victims, the team should be able to have some rest at their field camp, so inflatable tents are not the best solution, as they need a (noisy) compressor to inflate them and to keep them inflated. Not the best for having a restful sleep.

These are only some highlights of emergency tents keyfeatures.

The important question to ask is wether the tent selected for the emergency team is the best suited for its forseen purpose or not.

Ctetns, reliable and robust emergency tents.

(iii) Tents and shelter. Hidden costs in humanitarian aid and emergency. ASSEMBLY

Is it just the price of the emergency tent the only important thing for taking the right decision when selecting a tent for emergency brigades?

3. HOW IMPORTANT IS THE EASINESS OF ASSEMBLY OF AN EMERGENCY TENT?

Emergency aid activity is not a matter of money in the sense of money that can be produced by the people working on it, but it does not mean that the money or the hidden cost is not something important for the emergency activity.

How can influence in the cost of using a tent the assembly time and the people needed to assemble it?

This is the question that I am going to try to answer today.

The emergency, of course, is a matter of productivity, of urgent productivity!! It is important to be able to serve as many urgently needed of assistance people as you can in the shortest period of time, for instance when searching for victims of an earthquake under the debris of collapsed buildings.

Productivity of emergency services is something associated with persons, the persons at the emergency aid side, persons who must be ready to work hardly, so it is important for them using their time effectively. In such a context, it is important to reduce to the minimum necessary the auxiliary activities like the one of putting on a tent or caring about it in order to have the tent ready to use. All that can be done to ease the job of emergency brigades is going to improve their productivity and their capacity of concentration and to avoid annoying distractions that can disturb their work.

To set up an emergency tent would be nice if it could be done in a 'pop up' way just like modern individual tents can, but for big size tents - big enough to give adequate service to emergency brigades, as dormitory, canteen, command tent or others - it is something that has not been made possible yet. And I personally do not recommend a pop up one.

There are many manufacturers that are aware of that need and do their best to improve assembly time. But there is a difference between being aware and being committed to. Very frequently the real world is a bit apart from the manufacturer's specifications!

When you see that a tent it is claimed to be assembled in 3 minutes, it is important to know what period of time these 3 minutes are referring to and how much people is needed in the operation.

When it is a matter of assembly just one tent, it may be not so important, but as the number of tents increases the assembly time starts to become important and even crucial.

To be able of comparing the assembly time associated to different tents, it is important to have a truly comparative unit. The most common is to compare a rule of thumb. But the mistakes made can be quite big. Even it is scarcely used, there is only one possible unit that can be used to make real comparisons: The unit to be considered is the man-hour or man-minute for shorter operations.

Of course is not the same A) to assemble a tent in 5 minutes, with 4 people that B) to assemble one in 8 minutes, with 2 people. In the case A) in fact 5x4=20 minutes-man are needed to assemble the tent while in B) 8x2=16 minutes are needed: 4 minutes less, a 20% of time less than in case A)!!

But why it is important also to refer to the same period of time? The time for tent's assembly should be considered from the moment it is going to be placed at the site where it is going to be set up to the moment when the tent is ready for use.

Some tents are very heavy and they need to be carried by four strong man or more, or even by a forklift to be placed on the site. Once again, it is not the same thing to carry over a 100 m distance two tents, of same size and for same use, one being carried by 4 people and the other only by 2. And, of course, it is quite different to have a tent that can be carried inside just one bag, or to have two or three packages to carry. As more packages you have, the more time consumed in bringing them to the place where the tent is going to be used.

One more thing to be considered is the unpacking of the tent, it is not the same to have several packages that having only one, and it is not the same to have a easy to access boxlike package that to have one with a narrow hole through where to extract all the pieces of the tent. All these simple operations are time consuming and they need persons who performed them, so a wise way to compare the assembly time of several tents is to count all these operations in man-minute unit basis and then compare the final figures. It can led to a nasty surprise for you when you compare the assembly time stated by a manufacturer and the real time needed.

It is important the time needed to place every part of the tent in the right place in order to have them ready to be assembled.

Finally, it is not less important to consider how many tools are needed and how small the pieces are, as the smaller pieces in the package are, the easier to lose some of them while assembling the tent; as more tools or machinery needed, more possibilities of loosing some, not finding them at the right place, or breaking a tool. In case of fuel fed machinery it is also important to consider the inconveniences of fuel supplying.

It is not negligible the time to disassemble the tent and to pack it, sometimes the choice is to leave the tent there, but not always is the one desired.

MY CONCLUSSIONS ARE:

1) To be sure of how much time is consumed in an emergency tent assembly, it is necessary to consider:

i) Man-minutes to carry the tent package over a standard distance, 100 m for instance.
ii) Man-minutes to unpack the tent pieces and place them at the right position to easy the assembly
iii) Man-minutes to prepare and have ready the auxiliary machinery for assembly
iv) Man-minutes to assembly the tent.

2) The cost in man-minutes, or man-hours, is a non recoverable cost: When you lose time at the emergency site, you cannot recover it anymore, so, either you use more people for same tasks, or you reduce the time used in aiding victims.

3) Some hidden costs difficult of being evaluated are the cost of loosing tools or breaking them or the cost of loosing small pieces of the tent that must be substituted by improvised pieces not so efficient as original ones.

Next: Transport...

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(ii) Tents and shelter. Hidden costs in humanitarian aid and emergency. MAINTENANCE

Is it just the price of the emergency tent the only important thing for taking the right decision when selecting a tent for emergency brigades?

2. SHOULD A TENT KEEP ITS SHAPE WITHOUT HUMAN INTERVENTION? WHY NOT?

Are tent manufacturers always aware that emergency brigades and volunteers in humanitarian or emergency aid are also persons? Persons who need to have a rest after a long and strenuous journey.

They should not have to start another new job when they are going to use their temporary housing, the task of keeping the tent tight.

What if someone tought in advance in make it easier for these so sacrified and encouraging people their own living at their temporary housing?

When we look at the market we find many tent manufacturers, each of them offer 'their' own solution, but it is really hard to find some that offer not their solution but the solution of the people who is on site putting their best efforts to help damnified homeless people, to save lives, to help rejoining broken families (when possible), to organize the disaster after the catastrophe arises...

When you talk to the people who has been to the site for so many times in thier lives that they are not able to count them, you inmediately understand why they dislike so much inflatable tents, they like of course to put up their tents in few minutes, but... 

They don't want to become slaves of their temporary housing!, having to inflate and deinflate it several times a day, day after day, why?, because the outside temperature has the bad habit of changing without respecting the theoretical assumptions of tent designers.

High daytime temperatures and low temperatures at night makes the pressure of the tent vary and then it oblies to inflate the tent at night when the pressure is low and deinflate it at the middle of the day when the pressure is high.

It is not only the time spent on these annoying tasks but the noise produced by the compressor machine and the need of fueling it, and having a reserve of fuel or looking for it in the worst conditions. The emergency brigades or volunteers are not expected to devote their precious time to this intendence tasks or to be disturbed while resting at their tents by a disturbing noise when the compressor machine starts to run.

Is then the solution a traditional tent with its guy ropes? Not really, the experience shows that this kind of tents need to be adjusted also very frequently, particularly when the wind blows or the rain falls.

But, then, what is the solution for having the tent erected without devoting time to this task?

This is one of the main ideas to have in mind: A tent should be capable of keeping its shape without making it necessary to have some people tighting the tent or adequating the inside pressure. Let's free the users so they have more time to devote to the task they are there for.

Next: Assembly


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Tents and shelter. Hidden costs in humanitarian aid and emergency. SPACE.

Is it just the price of the emergency tent the only important thing for taking the right decision when selecting a tent for emergency brigades?



1. THE SPACE, FIRST THING NEEDED TO ENJOY A PRACTICAL COMFORT.

When an emergency arises, there is no much time left to spend in selecting the right tent. Nor for victims neither for professionals or volunteers helping them.

The emergency tent selection is like so many other things in emergency management: What makes the difference is the planification and preparedness.

One of the most important things for the people who is being on site for emergencies lasting more than a couple of days  is to have a place to sleep where it is possible to rest for a while.

It would be fine to have a nice and comfortable place, with a bed and enough space around in a solid building where to spend the resting ours trying to sleep, but this is not usually possible.

For most of the people on emergency site, the tent is the only available solution.

Tents were invented more than 20 centuries ago, the problem is that most of them still are quite similar to those of the first years.

The first consideration for having a practical comfort in a tent is having enough space, inside and at the surrounding space. We are use to see a messy labyrinth of guy ropes crossing all the free space between tents in an emergency campsite, making it difficult to move around to the people who have other major concerns at that moment. To make easier their lives letting them free to move around without obstacles crossing their path should be one main objective for a high quality tent designer.


When a volunteer or an emergency proffesional after a hard work journey, lasting sometimes for 24 or 48 hours, need to have a rest, we should help to him or her to enjoy a practical comfort in their temporary sleeping sites. If you ever tried it, you will know that one of most annoying things is when you have to put on or take off your trousers while sitting on the floor with your legs up, you rather would prefer to be able to stand up inside your tent. That should be a second major concern: Create a inner space spacious enough to move freely and make it easy to enter into and exit from this space.

To be continued...



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