Facing damaged, unsafe houses and a shortage of winterized tents, earthquake survivors in remote mountainous areas need alternatives for shelter. CARE's Bikram Chand Thakuri has devised a building similar to a yurt, a traditional felt and canvas home used by nomadic people in central Asia, to protect villagers from the brutal winter.
Villagers also need training to build the yurts in the few weeks before temperatures drop well below freezing. This is crucial for those who have decided to stay on their land, near their livestock and fields, rather than move to government-sponsored tent camps in the lowlands. Survival depends on waterproof tarpaulins and external supports for existing tents or on shelters such as the yurt idea.
Currently the challenge is to find funding for the structures, which cost $200 each, the same as for a tent. Some humanitarian organizations in the area are faced with suspending operations unless more support becomes available. The UN has received only about 24 percent of a recent appeal for more than $500 million.
The yurt is created out of sandbags laid in a circle, and with a framed door. Construction starts with a shallow trench to anchor the first layer of sandbags. A layer of plastic sheeting prevents ground water from soaking the bags. The bags are only half-filled so that they can be tamped down to provide a flat, wide surface. Dirt goes on between layers of plastic on the floor to absorb extraneous moisture.
The circular formation and 45 centimeter-thick walls mean that if a tremor does knock part of the wall over, compression will force the sandbags to fall outward, rather than tumbling onto the people inside. Like sandbags in a flood dike, if one bag is accidentally removed, the others will adjust to fill the empty space. Wooden posts around the outer edge support a lightweight roof, such as corrugated iron sheeting. Plastic tarpaulins over thick outer and inside walls ward off moisture and protect against snow and cold.
Sandbags can be carried to remote villages inaccessible to heavy cargo shipments, where they can be filled on the spot. A house needs about 450 sandbags. The surface covered by Bikram's design is comparable to a tent, but since the walls are straight, there is far more usable room. Once models are built, villagers can copy the idea.
The sandbags are safer than previous building methods. Many of the houses had been built by laying flat stones on mud until a wall was constructed, then placing beams over that. A flat roof, topped by two or three feet of mud, was usually erected in such a way that its main support depended on walls composed of little more than loose stones piled on top of each other. When the quake hit, the walls separated, and the heavy mud roof crushed the people inside.
"People are gradually beginning to realize that the ones who survived had the lightest roofs," says Bikram. A prototype of Bikram's design has already been built in Banna Allai, in the Allai Valley.
:
Islamabad: Bill Dowell, CARE, +41 22 795 10 24, +41 795 90 30 47
Atlanta: Lurma Rackley, CARE,
lrackley@care.org, (404) 979-9450
