Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
February 3, 2010

http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465...67/2518222.bin


A Windsor manufacturer has added a third shift and is working around the clock to provide shelter for thousands of Haitians left homeless by the earthquake that shattered their country last month.

Acting in conjunction with the Ottawa-based inventor, HousAll Systems Corp., Windsor's Ground Effects Ltd. has cranked up production at its Rhodes Drive plant to make temporary, modular shelter kits that provide water-tight, earthquake-resistant housing units capable of withstanding hurricane-force winds.

"We build 175 a week," said Jim Scott, president of Ground Effects.

"But that's not enough. We're trying for 350 a week. We thought this would represent 25 per cent of our business. But over the next three or four months, it could be 50 per cent. It's taken us by storm.... It's a monstrous project."

He said the plant, which employs 270, will need to hire an additional 60 to 90 workers in the next few months, as production ramps up, "to double our capacity" and meet the expected demand. Scott said the HousAll shelters represent the most dramatic shift away from the company's previous focus on the automotive industry.

"And our people like to work on it because it benefits the company, but it also benefits people who really need it," Scott said.

"I feel damn good about it. Building (automotive) running boards doesn't save lives. This keeps people safe."

The units, which can be 3.66 metres wide and 4.88 metres long, or 4.88 wide and 7.32 long and 2.44 to 3.05 metres high, are easily assembled by two workers within two hours using a provided single tool and can be joined to larger constructions, "like Lego or Mechano sets."

The assembled units can be used as emergency housing, schools, medical clinics or office space and barracks. One unit can house up to 10 people.

Each 580-pound shelter, which can last for up to 10 years, is built of reinforced corrugated polypropylene sheeting over 16 and 18 gauge rolled steel and plastic tubing. The units are designed to reflect sunlight and vent hot air to keep heat from collecting in the roof but can also be modified to add air conditioning.

The shelters have already passed the ultimate torture test. Eight units, in Haiti on an experimental basis when disaster hit, withstood the quake, including one unit behind the headquarters of Save the Children Canada in Port-au-Prince.

In an interview from Ottawa, inventer Miles Kennedy, founder and chairman of HousAll Systems, said Save the Children was so impressed that it has ordered 30 more units to house temporary offices and storage space. Meanwhile, the two companies have been meeting with CARE Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency and several other non-governmental organizations to explain the benefits.

Kennedy said that Red Cross analysis has shown that a large camp for refugees or internally displaced people in a serious disaster zone can remain for up to 10 years. With experts now suggesting it will take 10 years to dig out and recover from the effects of the earthquake, that's a scenario Kennedy said is highly likely in Haiti.

Traditionally, he added, the luckiest displaced families have been provided with tents, while the less fortunate have been forced to subsist in shacks and other shelters built out of tarpaulin, plastic sheets and corrugated sheet metal, leading to sprawling shanty towns. But, at a cost of several hundred dollars, those canvas tents last only for six months on average before they too fall apart and have to be replaced.

Spread over 10 years, he suggested, those "cloth shelters" end up costing more than the projected $4,000 to $6,000 cost of his units. And the HousAll shelter does not leak, withstands wind and is not easily damaged or broken, even "floating" on flexible steel frames above powerful earth tremors. The units have even been tested in a wind tunnel.

"I invented the product after I saw the plight of people following the (Southeast Asian) tsunami," said Kennedy. "They were living in deplorable conditions and I thought surely we can do better than this with our modern manufacturing techniques. You can't keep people in a tent for 10 years. It's not fair, it's not dignified. It doesn't keep you warm or dry."

Kennedy said he visited Haiti in the autumn to show his invention and he was immediately aware that Port-au-Prince, built on and beneath a mountain, on a fault line and with millions of people living in "shoddy and inferior" housing, was extremely vulnerable.

"My first thought was, oh my God, if they ever have an earthquake," he said. "Unfortunately, there was a disaster.... A terrible thing has happened. We're just pleased to be able to help."

Scott said he best outcome may be for international aid agencies to stockpile the disassembled shelters so that they can be instantly sent to disaster zones. The first bulk load of shelters will be sent to Haiti later this month, he said. Kennedy added orders will likely be trucked to Miami and then shipped by freighter to the Haitian port of Gonaives. Later, once the docks at Port-au-Prince have been repaired, they will be sent there.

Kennedy said the goal is to be able to build up to 3,000 a month.

He said the plant, which employs 270, will need to hire an additional 60 to 90 workers in the next few months, as production ramps up, "to double our capacity" and meet the expected demand. Scott said the HousAll shelters represent the most dramatic shift away from the company's previous focus on the automotive industry.

"And our people like to work on it because it benefits the company, but it also benefits people who really need it," Scott said.

"I feel damn good about it. Building (automotive) running boards doesn't save lives. This keeps people safe."

The units, which can be 3.66 metres wide and 4.88 metres long, or 4.88 wide and 7.32 long and 2.44 to 3.05 metres high, are easily assembled by two workers within two hours using a provided single tool and can be joined to larger constructions, "like Lego or Mechano sets."

The assembled units can be used as emergency housing, schools, medical clinics or office space and barracks. One unit can house up to 10 people.

Each 580-pound shelter, which can last for up to 10 years, is built of reinforced corrugated polypropylene sheeting over 16 and 18 gauge rolled steel and plastic tubing. The units are designed to reflect sunlight and vent hot air to keep heat from collecting in the roof but can also be modified to add air conditioning.

The shelters have already passed the ultimate torture test. Eight units, in Haiti on an experimental basis when disaster hit, withstood the quake, including one unit behind the headquarters of Save the Children Canada in Port-au-Prince.

In an interview from Ottawa, inventer Miles Kennedy, founder and chairman of HousAll Systems, said Save the Children was so impressed that it has ordered 30 more units to house temporary offices and storage space. Meanwhile, the two companies have been meeting with CARE Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency and several other non-governmental organizations to explain the benefits.

Kennedy said that Red Cross analysis has shown that a large camp for refugees or internally displaced people in a serious disaster zone can remain for up to 10 years. With experts now suggesting it will take 10 years to dig out and recover from the effects of the earthquake, that's a scenario Kennedy said is highly likely in Haiti.

Traditionally, he added, the luckiest displaced families have been provided with tents, while the less fortunate have been forced to subsist in shacks and other shelters built out of tarpaulin, plastic sheets and corrugated sheet metal, leading to sprawling shanty towns. But, at a cost of several hundred dollars, those canvas tents last only for six months on average before they too fall apart and have to be replaced.

Spread over 10 years, he suggested, those "cloth shelters" end up costing more than the projected $4,000 to $6,000 cost of his units.

"I invented the product after I saw the plight of people following the (Southeast Asian) tsunami," said Kennedy. "They were living in deplorable conditions and I thought surely we can do better than this with our modern manufacturing techniques. You can't keep people in a tent for 10 years. It's not fair, it's not dignified. It doesn't keep you warm or dry."

Kennedy said he visited Haiti in the autumn to show his invention and he was immediately aware that Port-au-Prince, built on and beneath a mountain, on a fault line and with millions of people living in "shoddy and inferior" housing, was extremely vulnerable.

"My first thought was, oh my God, if they ever have an earthquake," he said. "Unfortunately, there was a disaster.... A terrible thing has happened. We're just pleased to be able to help."

http://www.windsorstar.com/health/di...567/story.html


i'll be putting in an application in there tmmw morning :ok:

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

This is a great example of governments buying a product using debt. Then the company uses this debt purchase to hire more employees and order more raw materials to make the product then deliver it. Demand created by governments. INFLATIONARY!.

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

non-sustanable growth, but a good temp jolt for the company.

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

6K$ for that?................... I'm in the wrong business

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

wait till you see the price of the toilet seats . . .

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

I missed that. Six Grand! I thought they would sell for $1,500 tops. The government is not a very smart shopper.

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

6k you could just buy new conex boxes for that price plus they are bigger and virtualy indestructable.

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

These guys are fricken/fraken thieves!

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

How much did the Goberment spend of FEMA trailers? $1b? What a waste....

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Pretty sure it would be cheaper just to build a yurt...

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Temporary shelter in Haiti makes for problems later
Thursday, 02.04.10

There's a big scramble to build shelter to protect Haiti's earthquake victims from impending rains, but it is likely that tents and lean-tos will become permanent slum housing.


PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Remy Charles' new digs, a roughly five-by-five room in the Champs de Mars park, sleeps four side-by-side on the dirt floor.

The French teacher made it himself six days after an earthquake toppled his home and no government or aid agency arrived with a tent. Like many other Haitians made homeless by the Jan. 12 7.0 quake here, he scavenged through the rubble and plucked enough wood and tin to put a roof over his head in time for the spring rainy season.

Thousands of Port-au-Prince's newly destitute residents aren't waiting for the government or the United Nations. As they have for decades, they're taking matters into their own hands, cobbling shelter together from whatever's at hand.

But their self-help efforts -- abetted by international aid agencies that are encouraging Haitians to build out of sturdy materials as the rainy season rapidly approaches -- may complicate plans by the Haitian government to rebuild the country's capital.

Government leaders worry that scores of makeshift shacks rising from the dust of the quake will become permanent slums and frustrate plans to build a better Port-au-Prince -- a fear that experts say has repeatedly been borne out by previous disasters across the world.

``We had no choice,'' Charles said of his new home. ``The only objective of this construction is to just to get protection from the rain. I don't know how long I will be here. If nothing changes, in five years, we will still be here.''

Like Charles, the vast majority of Haitians living in tent cities that arose in the days following the quake are in desperate need of shelter. Most sleep under sheets strung from trees. The lucky ones used nails and sticks, and more and more are finding scraps of wood and tin to build with.

But the government wants them to stop.

``We are asking people not to do that,'' said Haiti's minister of communications, Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue. ``The problem is, we are waiting for better tents.''

The government and the United Nations have plans to move people out of the spontaneous, post-quake settlements into planned temporary camps just outside the city.

The government now needs to clear out the improvised camps inside the city and begin demolishing buildings to make room for planned, organized and well-built neighborhoods, said Charles Clemont, special advisor to President Rene Pr�val.

`GO FAST'

``I am asking my colleague in charge of demolition to go fast, but to go fast in an orderly fashion. We need to move these people within the city, not far,'' Clemont said. ``We need to start demolition now.''

But experts say that with so many homeless people on the streets and rain coming soon, there is no good alternative to improvised dwellings. Even as thousands of tents arrive from agencies around the world, recovery experts say those have a short life span, and there may be not be enough to shelter all those who need it.

The U.N., which has distributed 7,000 tents, says they're only a last resort -- a quick, short-term solution for a nation that faces rains starting later this month, and beyond that the summer hurricane season.

``The shelf life of a tent is six months to one year, when the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince will take five, seven or 10 years,'' said Mark Turner, spokesman for the International Office of Migration, the U.N. agency that is coordinating shelter issues. ``No one wants to live in a tent for a very long time.''

Turner said the agency's push now is to provide better materials, like rope, tarp and corrugated iron, to build ``transitional'' housing, which can be improved over time and even disassembled.

``Ten years from now, are there going to be towns in the parks where these camps are now? Possibly,'' Turner said. ``What are the options? Are you going to raze the whole city? You have to help the people where they are, and this is where they are.''

The shacks people are building, he said, have several benefits: Residents can stand in them, conduct business in them, and survive a hurricane in them.

And tents, some Haitians say, will not keep out the driving rain.

`BIG SHOWER'

``When it starts to rain, everyone here will have a big shower,'' said Marie Yvelen Boisdefer, who helps run the tent city at Sylvio Cator Stadium. ``Showers with no soap.''

If the history of disaster recovery across the world is any guide, experts say, the government won't be able to stand in the way of improvised rebuilding.

New shantytowns will likely arise, making the government's dreams of a better Port-au-Prince difficult to achieve, said Lawrence Vale, professor of urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-editor of The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. The Haitian government has talked about reducing the city's size by resettling people outside Port-au-Prince, then building better in urban areas. But though mass disasters like the Haiti quake often generate ambitious schemes for remaking cities, the reality is they almost never pan out, Vale said.

``People are going to build informally just as they were building before the earthquake,'' Vale said. ``A lot of people, especially those with remittances coming in from relatives abroad, will be able to use their resources to rebuild locally even if the larger picture remains substantially devastated.''

In storm-prone countries like El Salvador, entire neighborhoods are named after the date of the hurricane that forced the residents to set up there with donated materials. In Haiti's capital, some slums swelled with squatters who fled flooding in Gona�ves in 2008.

Some experts also warn the Haitian government must be careful that the new refugee camps it establishes outside the city don't also become permanent settlements.

``You do not want what are commonly referred to as refugee camps, hundreds of thousands of tents, you don't want them to become permanent,'' said David Meltzer, senior vice president of international services for the American Red Cross. architect and planner Andr�s Duany said residents should be provided boards and corrugated steel.

``No one ever moves off their community sites after a disaster -- ever in history,'' said Duany, who just returned from Port-au-Prince, where he met with Preval. ``They just don't.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/top-...y/1461774.html

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

That comes out to twenty bucks a square foot!

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Didn't most of the people in Haiti live in tin roofed shacks before the earthquake?

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Re: Shelter maker hurries for Haiti
 

Imagine if a major hurricane hits Haiti this summer.

The situation over there is unmanageable. Hundreds of millions a month in aid to provide basic care for the homeless. No commerce, no work, no structure.

I'm sad to say that many people will have to re-locate or die to sustain any hope of existence for a few left in Port-Au-Prince.