14 DAY TRIAL // The January 12 Haiti Earthquake killed thousands, but left even more homeless, without a place to sleep. As rescue efforts develop, it becomes more and more obvious that the thousands of tents that have been erected as temporary housing units will not be maintained for longer. Still, constructing new homes for all the people affected by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake will take many months. That is why experts at the Clemson University are currently working on new methods of converting basic shipping containers into temporary homes, able to take in a part of the inflow of refugees in Haiti.
The CU team has been working on this initiative for quite some time now. The experts here decided to use shipping containers as a starting point because, in the Caribbean nation, there was oftentimes a surplus of these structures in ports, and they were out of use. This means that the raw material needed is relatively easy to come by, and inexpensive as well. Originally, this research was started because scientists wanted to be able to provide immediate relief in the hurricane-prone Caribbean region, as well as in the continental US. After Katrina, a need for emergency homes was immediately obvious, PhysOrg reports.
But now, the Clemson team determined that the same principle applieed to earthquake victims as well. “Because of the shipping container's 'unibody' construction they are also very good in seismic zones and exceed structural code in the United States and any country in the world. They have also been used in other countries as emergency shelters in the case of earthquakes. As the SEED Project develops this will certainly be an area that we incorporate. With a few simple cuts at the port, a storage container can be turned into something that is livable and opens to the site,” CU Associate Professor Doug Hecker, who contributes to the research, says.
“You get people back in their communities and it strengthens those communities. They work on their home, not a temporary shelter, and then they work with their neighbors to rebuild the neighborhood. It leads to a healthier and safer community. And these are places often in dire need of better housing,” CU planning, design and the built environment PhD. student Pernille Christensen, who is also a research associate in the Richard H. Pennell Center for Real Estate, adds. “The project has a double mission: to address the local need of providing adequate housing for people in need while solving a global problem of recycling – giving purpose to empty containers that would otherwise be discarded,” CU School of Architecture Assistant Professor Martha Skinner concludes.