Design and Construction Guidance for Community Shelters
FEMA 361
FIRST EDITION July 2000
This document is a guidance manual for engineers, architects, building officials, and prospective shelter owners. It presents important information about the design and construction of community shelters that will provide protection during tornado and hurricane events. For the purpose of this manual, a community shelter is defined as a shelter that is designed and constructed to protect a large number of people from a natural hazard event. The number of persons taking refuge in the shelter will typically be more than 12 and could be up to several hundred or more. These numbers exceed the maximum occupancy of small, in-residence shelters recommended in FEMA 320: Taking Shelter From the Storm: Building a Safe Room Inside Your House.
To order a copy of this Publication, call the FEMA Publications Distribution Facility at 1-800-480-2520 and ask for FEMA 361. The FEMA shelter benefit/cost model, is provided on a CD-ROM as part of Appendix A. The CD-ROM also includes a detailed User's Guide that contains instructions for installing the B/C model software and conducting sample runs. The User's Guide is provided in the form of a Portable Document Format (PDF) file.
Download FEMA 361: Design and Construction Guidance for Community Shelters from the FEMA Library.
Each PDF below contains an individual chapter Bookmark Table of Contents, Thumbnail views, and internal links to ease navigation throughout the publication. NOTE: Downloaded PDFs must be kept in the same directory to work properly.
For more about tornadoes, please visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) web site tornado section.
Last Modified: Wednesday, 23-Jan-2008 13:13:42 EST