As the global hub of art, fashion, food, theater, and finance, New York City overflows with energy around the clock. In early 2020, however, its often-boisterous streets fell silent as healthcare professionals were inundated with patients suffering from the novel coronavirus pandemic. In mere days, hospitals throughout all boroughs reached maximum capacity. Care occurred anywhere there was room. Hallways reverberated with the swooshes and beeps usually heard in intensive care units.
Emergency management leaders urgently needed more space to treat patients and perform COVID-19 testing — and it had to be created fast.
So, they turned to using the safer, faster and better industrial tents of Industrial Tent Systems (ITS), a company of Bolton Holdings, — the emergency shelter planning, response and management experts. To successfully serve the NYC pandemic epicenter, ITS followed four key steps that their team passionately works by.
Industrial Tents Delivers Timely Responses
A large-scale, immediate reaction to support the people of New York was quickly produced by the ITS team. Expansive tents with all the amenities of a hospital — doors, floors, electricity, water, bathrooms, showers and furniture — were built throughout the city within hours.
These modular structures contained rooms for COVID-19 testing and rest areas for healthcare professionals. Also, spaces were made available for quarantining. One tent destined for Coney Island would ultimately be used to tend to patients after the main hospital exceeded capacity.
Getting massive industrial tents through the streets of a densely packed city was not easy, but ITS was able to tackle the challenge while arriving on the front-line quickly. The surfaces of tents and anything inside them needed regular, thorough cleanings to avoid becoming a COVID-19 super-spreader source. At the rate residents were being tested, standard cleaning solutions were required dozens of times each day. As a result, ITS partnered with a leading medical sanitation company to provide a long-lasting, non-toxic, antibacterial disinfectant spray solution.
The ITS crews put up and maintained the tents needed for COVID-19 testing—regularly safeguarding them and the public. (Company leaders also stayed in close contact with local health professionals, who directed workers to clinics around the city that had available tests.)
Use Temporary Industrial Tents
Modular tent structures are durable, weather-resistant, and can be set up without requiring oversized or heavyweight construction equipment. These tents can also be outfitted with just about any modern convenience imaginable and are very flexible, enabling easy scale ups or scale downs as needed. (They also offer the same benefits as permanent buildings without the hassle of permanence.)
Temporary tents can be seriously beneficial for many different types of functions, like:
- Industrial site operations
- Disaster relief
- Workforce accommodation
- Communal feeding areas
- Command posts
- Public shelters
- Equipment storage
- Temporary business operations
Provide Rapid Deployment with Industrial Tents
Disasters wait for no one. The ITS team’s super quick response and ample availability made them the safer, better and faster choice for the emergency medical needs for the residents and health care professionals of the NYC pandemic epicenter. (Also, once vaccines began to roll out, ITS also worked to set up temporary facilities to help streamline mass injection efforts.)
Experience is Key for Pandemic Relief
The ITS team was able to put its 35+ years of experience to work in providing impermanent shelter solutions for disaster response efforts. Having company leaders that have worked with FEMA, the U.S. Forest Service, and countless other government agencies (as well as private and commercial entities) truly helps ITS to always deliver the expertise that communities need in times of recovery from catastrophe.
