How To Get Food To Your Shelters in Cities: Skylines

To function, Emergency shelters need to be supplied with water, power, and food. The water and power comes from your usual pipes and power grid, while food is delivered to your shelters from generic industry.

These shelters are buildings to which your citizens can evacuate to in the event of disasters such as tornadoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes. They require the Natural Disasters DLC and are unlocked at the Big Town milestone (1,800 – 7,500 population, depending on the map).

Click on each shelter to see how well supplied it is with the three resources.

If you find your shelters lacking food, it’s usually for one of these reasons:

Not enough generic industry
Limited or no road access for deliveries

Your shelter’s food stores gradually get depleted even when people are not currently evacuated, so you’ll need a constant supply of food for them.

Problem #1: Not Enough Zoned Industry

The food for your shelters needs to come from zoned industry (orange zoning).

A van from an industry building driving into the shelter to drop off goods (aka food).

So if your city has no industry—if, say, you’ve phased out industry in favor of offices—then you won’t have the means of producing food and will have to rely on imports, which may not be enough to keep your shelters regularly stocked.

Also, bear in mind that you need zoned (growable) industry buildings for this purpose. Specialized industry areas (the ones with ploppable industry buildings, which you build with the Industries DLC) do not deliver food to shelters.

Problem #2: Limited Or No Road Access For Deliveries

If your shelters are running out of food even though you have zoned industry in your city, check to make sure the delivery vans can reach them.

It’s very common for industry to be some distance away from the shelters.

After all, you want the polluting industry zone away from your residences, while you want the shelters to be close to where people live.

Just make sure that there is a reasonably straightforward route between the industry zones and your shelters.

If, for example, your industry zones and residential zones are on opposite sides of a highway, consider creating a road that connects them directly.

Note: If you’re using the Traffic Manager mod, make sure you haven’t prohibited delivery vans from entering the roads or areas where your shelter is located.

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Liz Villegas

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Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

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How To Get Food To Your Shelters in Cities: Skylines

Problem #1: Not Enough Zoned Industry

Problem #2: Limited Or No Road Access For Deliveries

Liz Villegas

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