Credible, real-time US (and territories) disaster shelter information for AI agents and people: which shelters are open right now, where they are (down to county and the incident that opened them), which take pets, which have a generator, and which are at capacity. Unions the FEMA National Shelter System OpenShelters feed with the American Red Cross open-shelter map feed (deduped) and best-effort enriches with FEMA's richer FEMA_NSS layer, honest about missing data.
Gives agents and people the most comprehensive, credible open-shelter picture available: it unions FEMA's National Shelter System (NSS) OpenShelters feed with the American Red Cross Emergency-Action feed (the redcross.org map's source) and dedupes them, because FEMA is synchronized downstream of Red Cross and lags it by up to a day, so neither feed alone is complete. Coverage is the United States and its territories only (both FEMA NSS and the American Red Cross are US feeds), not other countries. FEMA rows are best-effort enriched with the richer FEMA_NSS layer (county/parish, the driving incident, the open date, generator and floodplain/surge attributes), and the CLI folds in live occupancy (current population, the general/medical/other/pet breakdown, capacity, and the driving incident) from the American Red Cross Open_Shelters layer, the one feed that reports a real headcount. Every shelter carries a source field recording which feeds it came from ('fema', 'redcross', or 'fema+redcross', with '+occupancy' appended once live population is merged in). It shows only publicly listed shelters: the Open_Shelters roster is used to fill population onto shelters already in the public feeds, never to add one, and any shelter the Red Cross keeps off its public map (hide_from_public) is dropped even when FEMA's feed lists it, so the tool stays conservative about never directing people to a site the Red Cross has not cleared for the public. It answers the questions people actually ask in a disaster, like 'the closest open shelter to me that allows pets' and 'which shelters are at capacity', filters by state, pets, accessibility, county, or generator, geocodes addresses (and bare ZIPs) when coordinates are missing, and never invents a number it does not have (a missed secondary fetch degrades to explicit null with a note, never a wrong value). Deep thanks to all first responders, emergency management practitioners, and relief nonprofit organizations for the work you do in communities when disaster strikes. This is an unofficial tool; in a life-threatening emergency call 911 and follow the official guidance and evacuation orders from FEMA, the American Red Cross, your local emergency management, and your local authorities.
Install from source
This repository builds with the Go toolchain (1.26.4 or newer):
go install github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library/library/other/shelters/cmd/shelters-pp-cli@latest
Or clone and build the CLI plus the bundled MCP server:
git clone https://github.com/mvanhorn/printing-press-library
cd shelters-pp-cli
make build # binaries in ./bin
go test ./... # parsers verified against real + clearly-labeled synthetic fixtures in internal/cli/testdata
Then run shelters-pp-cli doctor (no API key needed) and shelters-pp-cli brief --markdown for a one-call situational briefing.
Install via the Printing Press library
Once this CLI is published to the public library, one command installs both the shelters-pp-cli binary and the pp-shelters agent skill (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, and other agents supported by the upstream skills CLI):
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install shelters
For CLI only (no skill):
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install shelters --cli-only
For skill only — installs the skill into the same agents as the default command above, but skips the CLI binary (use this to update or reinstall just the skill):
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install shelters --skill-only
To constrain the skill install to one or more specific agents (repeatable — agent names match the skills CLI):
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install shelters --agent claude-code
npx -y @mvanhorn/printing-press-library install shelters --agent claude-code --agent codex
Pre-built binary
Download a pre-built binary for your platform from the latest release. On macOS, clear the Gatekeeper quarantine: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <binary>. On Unix, mark it executable: chmod +x <binary>.
Quick Start
# Confirm the CLI is wired up; no API key needed.
shelters-pp-cli doctor
# What shelters are open right now (few or none when no disaster is active).
shelters-pp-cli shelters
# The closest open shelters to me that allow pets.
shelters-pp-cli near "2400 W Bradley Ave, Champaign, IL" --pets
# One-call situational briefing with the gratitude and safety footer.
shelters-pp-cli brief --markdown
Unique Features
These capabilities aren't available in any other tool for this API.
Closest shelter
-
near — Ranks open shelters by straight-line distance from a lat,lon, ZIP, or street address; geocodes shelters that are missing coordinates and reports any it cannot locate rather than dropping them; filterable by pets, ADA, wheelchair, county/parish, and confirmed onsite generator.
Answers 'the closest shelter to me that allows pets' in one call; add --pets, --ada, or --wheelchair.
shelters-pp-cli near 78566 --pets --limit 3
Capacity
-
capacity — Computes utilization only where both a population and a capacity are reported, labeling the denominator (evacuation vs post-impact), and surfaces shelters reported FULL without asserting it as ground truth.
Answers 'which shelter is at capacity?' honestly, marking unknowns as unknown.
shelters-pp-cli capacity --state TX
One-call situational awareness
-
brief — One command returns the open count, breakdowns by state and by the driving incident, pet-friendly and accessible counts, and the capacity picture, with an optional human briefing.
Reach for this first when an agent asks 'what is the shelter situation right now'.
shelters-pp-cli brief --markdown
Listings and detail
-
shelters — Open shelters from the union of FEMA OpenShelters and the American Red Cross feed (deduped, each tagged with a source field: fema, redcross, or fema+redcross), flattened and filterable by state, pets, ADA, wheelchair, managing org, status, county/parish, and confirmed onsite generator; FEMA rows best-effort enriched with the richer FEMA_NSS/0 layer (county, the driving incident, generator and floodplain/surge attributes).
Use to narrow open shelters to the ones that match a person's needs.
shelters-pp-cli shelters --state FL --ada --json
-
shelter — Full detail for one shelter joined on the stable shelter_id rather than the churning objectid, with unreported fields as explicit null; enriched with FEMA_NSS/0 fields (county, the driving incident, open date, generator, floodplain/surge, and the population breakdown) when reported.
Use when you have a shelter_id and need its full record.
shelters-pp-cli shelter 368133
Recipes
Closest pet-friendly shelter as compact JSON for an agent
shelters-pp-cli near 29.76,-95.37 --pets --limit 1 --json --select data.shelters
Shelters confirmed wheelchair accessible in one state
shelters-pp-cli shelters --state TX --wheelchair --json
Which shelters are at or over capacity
shelters-pp-cli capacity --json --select data.shelters
One-call situational briefing
shelters-pp-cli brief --markdown
Open shelters in one county that have a generator
shelters-pp-cli shelters --county Cameron --generator --json
Spine only, no second fetch
shelters-pp-cli shelters --no-enrich --json
Output Formats
# Human-readable listing (default in terminal, JSON when piped)
shelters-pp-cli shelters
# JSON for scripting and agents
shelters-pp-cli shelters --json
# Filter the inner data to specific fields
shelters-pp-cli shelters --json --select data.count
# Dry run — short-circuit without sending a request
shelters-pp-cli shelters --dry-run
# Agent mode — JSON + compact + no prompts in one flag
shelters-pp-cli shelters --agent
Agent Usage
This CLI is designed for AI agent consumption:
- Non-interactive - never prompts, every input is a flag
- Pipeable -
--json output to stdout, errors to stderr
- Filterable -
--select returns only the fields you need
- Honest - missing data is null or "unknown", never invented
- Read-only - this CLI does not create, update, delete, publish, send, or mutate remote resources
- Agent-safe by default - no colors or formatting unless
--human-friendly is set
Every response carries source and a client-side fetched_at (UTC), because the feed has no server timestamp.
Exit codes: 0 success, 2 usage error, 3 not found, 5 API error, 7 rate limited, 10 config error.
Data, freshness, and honesty
- Two feeds, unioned: the FEMA National Shelter System OpenShelters feed (
gis.fema.gov) is the spine; the CLI also fetches the American Red Cross Emergency-Action feed (services.arcgis.com, the redcross.org map's source) and unions the two, deduped on normalized name + state + ZIP. FEMA is synchronized downstream of Red Cross (every morning, then every 20 minutes), so a freshly opened shelter can appear in Red Cross up to a day before FEMA. Neither feed alone is complete; the union is. Every shelter carries a source field recording which feeds it came from (fema, redcross, or fema+redcross), with +occupancy appended once live occupancy is merged in. Both feeds cover the United States and its territories only, not other countries.
- Live occupancy (current population), public shelters only: the OpenShelters spine and the Red Cross map feed both carry a null population on their public mirrors, so the CLI also folds in the American Red Cross Open_Shelters operational layer (
services.arcgis.com), the one feed that reports the current total_population, the general/medical/other/pet breakdown, the evacuation/post-impact capacity, and the driving incident. It is matched onto the union by name + state + ZIP (its id is an ArcGIS-internal id, not FEMA's shelter_id) as a fill-only overlay: it adds the headcount onto FEMA and Red Cross rows alike but never introduces a shelter. Open_Shelters is the Red Cross operational roster and includes sites the Red Cross deliberately keeps off the public map (privacy, transitional, non-walk-in), and it carries no public/hide flag of its own; a row with no match in either public feed is therefore withheld, so the CLI surfaces only publicly listed shelters. Capacity is often blank in blue-sky periods; population then has no denominator, which is why capacity honestly reports utilization as unknown.
- Red Cross hidden shelters are suppressed: the Red Cross marks some open shelters off its public map (
hide_from_public other than No: privacy, transitional, or sites not cleared for walk-ins). The CLI fetches the complete hidden set and drops any matching shelter, even one FEMA's public feed lists. It matches on normalized name + state with compatible ZIP, or on normalized street address + exact ZIP5 when both records provide them. The Red Cross's own decision to keep a site off the public map wins over another feed listing it. If the hidden set cannot be verified, the command fails before emitting shelter rows.
- Red Cross access: the Red Cross Emergency-Action endpoint requires a
Referer: https://www.redcross.org/ header and returns Web Mercator geometry (the CLI requests outSR=4326 for lat/lon); the Open_Shelters occupancy layer needs no Referer. No API key for either.
- Enrichment: FEMA rows are best-effort enriched with the richer FEMA_NSS/FeatureServer/0 layer joined by
shelter_id (county, incident, generator, populations).
- Best-effort honesty: the Red Cross union, FEMA_NSS enrichment, and live occupancy merge are optional overlays on the authoritative FEMA spine. If any optional feed is skipped (
--no-enrich, offline) or fails, the command degrades gracefully with an explanatory note. The Red Cross hidden-shelter filter is a required safety check in every data-source mode and fails closed. No personal contact columns (organizer name/phone/email, mailing address) are ever requested.
- Freshness: both feeds update roughly a few times a day and only change when an emergency manager or Red Cross updates a record, so status can lag reality. The feeds carry no per-record timestamp; this CLI stamps each response with the client fetch time.
- Empty is normal: a near-empty list means no disaster is active, not a failure. Counts spike during named events.
- Coordinates: frequently null even for open shelters;
near geocodes from the street address and reports anything it cannot locate.
- Capacity: computed only where population and a capacity both exist; the denominator is labeled. Never assumed.
- Full NSS (beyond the public OpenShelters feed) requires an MOU with FEMA and is out of scope;
gis-links points to it.
Health Check
shelters-pp-cli doctor
Verifies configuration and connectivity to the feed.
Configuration
Config file: ~/.config/shelters-pp-cli/config.toml
Static request headers can be configured under headers; per-command header overrides take precedence.
Troubleshooting
shelters is empty — That is the normal quiet-state contract (no disaster active). It is not an error.near says a shelter could not be located — The feed omitted coordinates and the address would not geocode; those shelters are reported in a count and excluded from the ranking. Pass a precise lat,lon origin for the most accurate distances.capacity shows "unknown" for a shelter — The feed did not report both a population and a capacity for it; this tool will not invent a denominator.
API-specific
- shelters is empty — That is the normal quiet-state contract (no disaster active). It is not an error.
- near says a shelter could not be located — The feed omitted coordinates and the address would not geocode; those shelters are reported in a count and excluded from the ranking. Pass a precise lat,lon origin for the most accurate distances.
- capacity shows unknown for a shelter — The feed did not report both a population and a capacity for it; this tool will not invent a denominator.
- a shelter you expect is missing, or the red_cross note says the feed was unavailable — Results union FEMA OpenShelters with the American Red Cross feed; if the Red Cross fetch fails the command degrades to FEMA-only with a note in the red_cross field. FEMA syncs downstream of Red Cross and can lag by up to a day, so a brand-new shelter may appear only under source 'redcross'. Retry, or check 'gis-links' for the source layers.
Gratitude and safety
Thank you to all first responders, emergency management practitioners, and relief nonprofit organizations for the work you do in communities when disaster strikes.
This is an unofficial tool. FEMA's National Shelter System, the American Red Cross, and your local emergency management are the authoritative sources. In a life-threatening emergency call 911 and follow official guidance and evacuation orders.