I'm not a professional so I hesitate to give advice especially when lives are at stake, but I can give my armchair general opinion <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> just keep in mind I'm not very experienced.

Bam, something happens, and people start pouring through the door. Some injured, others just trying to get out of the streets. Depending on the disaster, they may only need refuge for a few hours, or for the full 10 days. If people only stay for a few hours (for instance, on 9/11 some people just entered buildings to get out of the cloud of dust. They didn't need to stay long.) then you may have a situation where you have more than 150 people coming and going, even if not all at once. These guys just need to catch their breath, attend to any immediate injuries if applicable, and will probably be frantically trying to communicate with someone even though cell phones will probably be useless because everybody and their brother is flooding the network. For these people who are only staying for a few hours (if that), a bottle of water, a dusk mask, and a wet rag might be all they need, and it would be very helpful. Others will need first aid, and the ability to communicate with emergency personnel will be very helpful. Remember, their phones will be flooded with calls and cell phones might not work, so this is why it's important to work out a system with the local emergency services. Let them know you exist and see what you can work out with them. Maybe they can designate your facility as a critical checkpoint for the surrounding area. Being able to tend to 150 people in a disaster, when hospitals and other facilities are flooded is a big deal.

For long term (several days up to the maximum your facility is capable of handling) refugees, then they may need to be issued accomidations. Issuing them a cot or sleeping bag, a wool blanket, the keychain, and a hygene kit.

Set up an admittance plan for people who start coming through the door if you can, so you can keep track of them. Issue cards with questions on them, and have them fill out things like medical conditions, what medicine they may be currently taking, and so forth while they wait if they need medical treatment for minor injuries. This saves time, because you've got to ask that kind of thing anyway. Have them leave contact information, so if a friend or family member swings by and asks "Has so and so been here" you can tell them and maybe be able to give them information needed to get in touch with each other, instead of just feeling sorry and saying there's no way of knowing.

Bedding Facilities:
I'm not aware of your current situation in this regard. If it's some sort of shelter, then there may be facilities already in place. Do you have individual rooms (better depending on the disaster)? Larger, medium sized rooms capable of housing groups of people (also good for isolating groups and preventing the spread of illness) or do you have one big open air room, like a gymnasium?

Regardless, at a very minimum there should be a sleeping mat and a wool blanket available for each person, and a few extra wouldn't hurt. Both of these are inexpensive and can be found at most military surplus places (US cav for instance). The sleeping mat is like a roll of foam or something... hard to describe.

A cot and a footlocker for each person would be even better. In a large open air room like a gym, a footlocker is important as it gives people a sense of security. They can keep their stuff in there under lock and key and not worry about it being stolen while they sleep. You can store the wool blanket, a small lock and key, the keychain from your keychain idea, a couple of bottles of water (they can refill the containers) and a personal hygene kit inside the footlockers so that you don't have to hand them out in the emergency (frees up staff). Just assign them a place to rest/lay down and they've got everything they need in the footlocker.

If a cot and footlocker is out of bounds because of cost, you may or may not have to form lines and hand out the sleeping mat, blankets, and other items individually.

Some people will need special attention. You may have to stock up on items such as bedpans (for the elderly), baby food, and diapers. You probably don't need many of these (certainly not 150 sets, I doubt all the occupents will be babies or the elderly!), but at least some would be helpful.

Keep in mind some may soil the bedding through whatever means (bleeding, vomit, etc) and it would become unusable for the next person, so a few spares is good.

With only ~20 staff, and 10 days to go, hygene will be largely up to the individual and odds are they didn't bring anything but the clothes on their back. The hygene kit might include
-Purell hand sanitizer (the alcohol stuff you don't need water for)
-Soap
-Small mirror
-Shaving kit (if applicable)
-Comb
-Sponge or Cloth
-Toilet Paper
-Pack of kleenex
-Zinc/Baby Powder
-Deoderant
-Toothbrush set


It's going to get awfully uncomfortable for 150 people in there after a few days of no showers! Especially if some are sick.

Medium sized rooms are nice, because if one group is sick, recovering, or needs special attention, you can seperate them.

I assume you'll have a generator for power in case of a natural disaster. Laundry facilities, even limited (a couple of washer/dryers), would not go unappreciated I'm sure. It may not be absolutely needed, but a spare set of clothes would be good, even if you don't have enough for everybody. A simple set of plain loose drawstring pants and shirt would work fine, just to have something to put on while you're waiting for your clothes.

Agreed with flipper about the first aid kit. Ideally, you can aquire the medical facilities to treat problems possible in a natural disaster. The first aid kit shouldn't be just a small personal/family one obviously. While I doubt you'd need to treat all 150 people, you may have to give aid to several dozen even if most of them just have minor problems. As flipper mentioned, you can probably benefit from more extensive first aid facilities too. Oxygen tanks, IVs and stands, portible defribulators, facilities to treat burns, and depending on your climate, other issues (extreme cold/heat). More importantly, have at least a few people qualified to use it.

One inevitable problem will be some people needing daily medication. For instance, diabetics, heart/blood pressure medication, and so forth. Because of the natural disaster and lack of preperation on their part, they might not have enough beyond a day or two, yet they are unable to get home, or have nowhere to go. Obviously you can't hope to stock those supplies, and you should concentrate on the most likely problems.

Make sure you can treat outbreaks of lice, fleas, and so forth. Worst case scenario for a natural disaster would be an outbreak of some sort of illness... if your facility is an open area like a gym, it would be very difficult to avoid spreading the illness.

Food:
Rice is fine. It'll keep people fed for 10 days, and that's what's important. Preparing it in different ways, and adding different seasonings will help, but that's a luxury of course. Variety is good, but make sure you haven't neglected another aspect of the facility in order to provide it. They can live with plain rice if they have to. But yeah, variety would be good. Maybe stock up on Ramen noodles, soup supplies, and so forth. 10 gallons of ice cream would be a real boost in morale after you've had rice for 8 days. MRE's would be great, but they're prohibitively expensive.

I was going to suggest offering a multi-vitamin to everybody if they'd like one, to help make up for what the rice does not provide, but 10 days isn't really that long. If it was several weeks or months that might be a good idea though.

Entertainment is important for keeping people from going bonkers... but I think it's a little lower on the totem pole. Some cards, board games, maybe a projector to play some movies...

As for electronics, a police scanner, a national weather alert radio, and various types of cell phone chargers might find use as well.

Some of the other replies contain excellent suggestions as well.

Again, I'm not an expert on the matter but those are a few thoughts. Cost will be the most limiting factor I'm sure... buying 150 items, even if they are only a few dollars each, adds up real quick, so I don't really expect you can implement all the suggestions. Some of the items are incredibly expensive too... a portable defribulator might run into the thousands. But hopefully some of the suggestions might give you some ideas <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


Good luck and keep safe!