I operate shelters for the local Red Cross chapter, just to clarify a few things:

- not all shelters are Red Cross, here anyway local communities (city governments) have built up the capacity to shelter local residents. They pre-locate cots and blankets and other resources, and city employees train to run the shelter, many of them receiving training from Red Cross. You can't have a Red Cross shelter everywhere, and our local volunteer base virtually guarantees that we can't open more than 3 concurrent shelters in our county; in a large disaster we'll work with cities and county emergency management to open larger venues as shelters, with a call to our cavalry - the national Red Cross - to bring more supplies and volunteers to address actual needs, arriving within 24 to 72 hours.

- everyone learned from Katrina, and nowadays we all have procedures for your pets. In King County it involves parallel pet shelters adjacent to human shelters, where you check them in and they are cared for my local volunteers (Humane Society etc), under supervision of some excellent veterinarians. Then you proceed to the human shelter and check in yourself and your family there. On smaller shelters we can have your pets sheltered by the local Humane Society or other pet shelters until you are restored to your pre-disaster status. Its no big thing from our perspective, because there are enough people who love animals to make this happen - just like there are enough people who love people to make human shelters possible. And its acceptable to us if you opt to keep your pets in your car and register to stay in the human shelter. Sometimes folks will sleep in their car with their pets - companionship goes a long way in any disaster. We'll provide blankets for you, if we can spare them.

- your local community shelter rules may vary. All however have a no weapons policy, guaranteed. At the Red Cross shelter we have a strict policy of no weapons inside the shelter, and we advise folks to stash them in their cars. Cities may take the same stance, although I participated in a city-run shelter exercise where they offered the local sheriff to catalog and store weapons instead of requiring folks to stash them somewhere themselves - still, I have to wonder if the sheriff is really ready to handle securing weapons, that might have just been the bright idea of some local exercise operator. YMMV. No shelter can tolerate weapons in an environment where people are displaced and distressed, and increasingly prone to violence. Safety of shelter clients is our highest priority. I can guarantee that anyone brandishing a weapon in a shelter will receive suitable accommodations of the iron bar kind. The Red Cross hasn't solved this problem of weapons possession, which is a pretty common conundrum in large and random public interactions - we won't solve it to your satisfaction to carry weapons into the shelter under our control anyway.

- if you need to decontaminate then a shelter is not for you; in response to a chemical or radiation exposure, local officials will run decontamination stations, and you should get in line there. If we open shelters in response to chemical or radiation exposure, they will be well-outside the contamination zone and additional scrutiny will be applied to screen for contamination. We have the safety of shelter clients as our highest priority.

- otherwise, weather, injuries, incapacities both mental and physical, being alone or displaced, all good reasons to take shelter. A shelter is what it says - shelter from the storm or disaster. Shelters also provide food for those who don't want to sleep there, as well as showers if they are available. They are a resource for people impacted by disasters much like anything else, you can take them or leave them. If you're trying to get from point A to point B and can't make it on your own, I would rate a shelter as an excellent rally point for assistance - there may not be anything set up formally in the initial hours or days, but your request for transportation can be relayed along and meantime we can initiate safe and well contacts with your loved ones who are looking for you and you may be hoping to rejoin. The Red Cross almost always has a comms capacity, and as available we use it to connect our clients with their loved ones.

- the list of recommended stuff to take into a shelter is pretty good, and matches up pretty well with the things Red Cross folks are recommended to take with them on 2-3 week disaster deployments - often RC volunteers sleep in staff shelters or even in the same shelters as their clients. EDIT: don't forget your meds, prescription and otherwise. The legal kinds can be taken into shelters, illegal ones I would not recommend unless you are comfortable with being relocated by the cops to a more appropriate shelter. At the Red Cross we should have health services staff who can help you recover necessary prescriptions and medical devices, typically free of charge or costing you the deductible you would typically pay. One thing I can recommend is a sleeping bag liner, the type you can buy at REI, they're made of silk or polyester and they give an element of warmth, but not as much as a full sleeping bag. Very nice if you arrive somewhere and there are no blankets available until morning, or you have 7 hours to wait at the airport for a red eye to your destination, you can crawl in and sleep comfortably. Liners roll up to the size of a pair of (wool) socks. Easily multi-use, reusable, and $30-65 dollars at REI.

- Most shelter won't check your baggage either in terms of security or in terms of a coat check: we're not responsible for your belongings, so make sure that you keep an eye on them yourself, and never leave anything unattended that you can't go on without.