In a time-limited acute health crisis, an Incident Commander might choose to shelter these populations in place in their facilities for a number of reasons:
- The special needs of these populations require specific accommodations. Although they should know exactly how to provide for the special needs of their clients, and are in some cases required by law to do so, facilities that house these populations are sometimes not well-prepared to deliver the specific care that their clients would need in case of evacuation.
Incident Commanders recognize that responders are ill-equipped to provide these special accommodations, and that attempting to evacuate them would be time and resource intensive and thus might decide to shelter them in place rather than evacuate them and risk exposing them to the hazard.