Winning With Winter in Anchorage Alaska

Winter is the tipping point for the return of longer days in the northern hemisphere. With the winter solstice on December 21st the shortest day of the year has arrived, the fall of the days is over and things start looking up.

As the frost accumulates on the ceiling of the tent this month,and when the wind chill turns that 9 degree temperature into minus thirty and fine snow dusts the inside of the tent through the vents one knows that if the nose turning purple doesn't become necrotic that it won't be necessary to promote a Liberty Valance chic propaganda campaign next year.

We look forward to the arrival of winter when each day a few minutes of additional sunlight promise the basking days of February. If the homeless of Anchorage have bus passes during the winter provided by the municipal government for free we are sure that the effect of saving many from hypothermia will warm the hearts of bureaucrats collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars of cold compensation. While such a program does not yet exist, it is almost inevitable that the prevailing compassionate conservativism will soon create such relief for the poor finding their way into being stranded in Anchorage from outlying villages.

Studying my tent fora few hours or more, I realized that it is a good model for a solid tempoerary shelter universally. One needs a steel multi-pipe connector at the top and several steel pipes to insert and fasten into it. A shelter roughly like a bell shaped tent wood be structured with insulated panels attached with pipe clamp fasteners. The seem covering would be attached with wing nuts on the left and right. The floor would also be several pipes off the ground level connect the also bracing the side struts. chunks of wood could be tossed under the floor pipe joists before the insulated floor panels are put down.

The shelter could be assembled in two hours or less. The panels could be made of plywood with fiberglass resin rolled on to repel water, and they would be the bread over a one inch blue foam insulation panel.

Since I am writing a little here about the homeless problem in Anchorage Alaska there is one additional point about surviving the winter here I ought to mention.

The City is fairly sprawling and there aren't many places where the homeless or stranded might legally camp. It is a hard thing to be able to build a quality shelter on a day or two from natural wood and instead be compelled for social reasons to spend a winter sleeping on the ground under a bit of nylon cloth without a fire or propane to heat coffee and raise the internal body temperature. All of these comfortable insiders obviously have other priorities and are content enough to write off those not winning at social musical chairs as inebriates and mentals.

As the City outlawed camping in city parks last winter they should create camping facilities for the homeless that could be screened for genuine need such as are food stamp eligibility and as should be social security and medicare are. Quality camp sites just for the screened homelss ought to be made available seasonally.

I cannot create a business here manufacturing those solid temporary dome homeless structures easy to assemble and disassemble. Perhaps the top 2% of income earnings can find another trickle up from the concept and create a local producer who would provide surplus or demo units for the use of the homeless campers seasonally.

There is one shelter in Anchorage Alaska is a cold part of town that is reportedly (see O'Malley's article in the Anchorage Daily News Dec. 2nd) full and over flowing these cold nights with the homeless sleeping packed with more than 200 each night. 16 homeless people perished from hypothermia this year. This week three were rescued in cold weather incoherence and taken to hospital. A better system of realistically affording opportunities for human beings to help themselves in cold weather without being warehoused in communal ad hoc shleters should be made.

40% of the people at a homeless shelter have mental illness issues. The shelters are a first stop for people out of jail. Drug users and alcohol abuse find the shelter a phenomenal stop. Needless too say, such a synergy of social dysfunction is not conducive to personal security or positioning for advancement of personal interest; it is just another challenge for survival in addition to the winter. It is also a source of stress as a stop for rural Alaskans that visit the city of Anchorage and become stranded here for whatever reason-perhaps they missed the last flight to Kodiak for work.