Mr Bai and Mr Gao have sent images of the tarp arriving and new shelters being built. They have been posted as a photo gallery under the “photos” page here “click me”

During Sam and Ali’s reccy trip up in Gansu (Yuhe and Fengxian) we ordered 60 tarpaulins from our shanghai supplier who guaranteed us a 3 day delivery. As Caroline, Christine (translator) and Luke arrived in Longnan shi they had a call regretting to inform them that this was not to be the case but actually 10 days – oh!? - and that they had only 24 bags in stock. How could that happen after five weeks of weekly contact with the factory? The next day was planned that the team head up to Yuhe at 0800h to discuss other shelter designs and how best to cut the tarp. So, that night was a mad rush to source: 1. a transport company to deliver the 24 bags of tarp in 3 days at the factory’s expense and 2. another factory who has stock for the remaining 36 bags. Having already tried to source another tarpaulin factory more locally to save transport costs with no success they knew it was not going to be easy, but this time they HAD to find one. That night no joy. The following morning however they got a phone call from Mr Bai (our Longnan shi contact) informing them that due to the rain they would not be able to head up to Yuhe until it stopped as the “mountain was slipping”! So, madly they copy and pasted contact details from alibaba.com in to a word document (a list of about 20 potential suppliers) to print and call on the way up. Mr Bai called again, “we can leave now”. Control P. They headed back to the hotel to load the 4×4 with their bags and the compiled list of suppliers. Christine was handed the mobile and started to work though the list.

About 2 hours in they hit jackpot. A supplier that could make the 36 bags of 30×12m2 triple laminate 14×16/inch weave in one day, and deliver in 4 days from Yiwu, in Zhe Jiang province to Longnan shi.
Discussions with the villagers and the government department started the morning the next day after a rebuilding ceremony of which the team were asked to be present.

There were mixed views as to the time people expected to be living in temporary shelters. The government was expecting villagers to move back into permanent housing within 3 months. Villagers however (more realistically) were expecting to live in their self-build temporary structures for a year. A controversy that could only be solved with two different shelter solutions.

Unlike the wide flat plains of Zundao with the foothills behind, Yuhe, deep in the mountains had very little flat land to build on. Individual small housing was more practical. They had timber, however they wanted to conserve the amount used in the temporary shelter as it was being reused in the construction of their permanent home. The 3 month solution was a simple A frame with low rubble walls: this conserves the amount of timber used. The 60 bags of tarp would cover 600 shelters according to this design. The year-long solution was similar to that of Zundao however using the tarp for the side walls as well as the roof. The 60 bags of tarp would cover 300 shelters according to this design. A cutting sheet for the tarp was made for both designs so that none of it would be wasted.

During their stay up in Yuhe problems accumulated with getting the tarp., which delayed the material by 4 more days.
Unfortunately the team could not stay until the materials arrived. Big minus. To date we have confirmation that the material has arrived in Yuhe.

Visa permitting Luke, will be heading back to the areas where the I BOUGHT A SHELTER team has worked. Feedback a month or two on, after the implementation of our shelters and materials, will be interesting. Photos will be posted later on this blog.

Just before Sam and Ali left for the reccy in Yuhe, HODR had a meeting with a Chinese organisation called (breath in) “Ten NGO’s in Shaanxi province get together to help the disaster area” (TNGOSPGTHDA) of which Ali was present for half. TNGOSPGTHDA started working in Sichuan immediately after the earthquake struck, helping villagers building temporary structures. As Ali steped out of the meeting to run for the bus to Gansu with Sam, Luke stepped in. TNGOSPGTHDA were working in Zundao, north of Mianyang out of the government temporary compound.

John and Stef talked about a potential partnership with George from TNGOSPGTHDA after they were done, Luke asked if he could go up to see their operation. With a few phone calls they sorted out an invitation (as an engineer) for him to go up for a day and a half to view their work.
Zundao had been very badly hit (all buildings levelled), and is mostly comprised of farming (rice and fruit) small villages of 70-200 people.

TNGOSPGTHDA and Luke spent the morning talking to villagers to find out their skills and assessing what materials they had available after the quake for temporary reconstruction. After about 5 hours Luke was asked, “can you draw?” Luke: “yes”, George: “good, we need you to design a shelter from what you have learnt this morning while I brief the villagers.” Luke was handed a school black board, a fat piece of chalk and 30 minutes to make a drawing for the villagers to work from. The design took what George previously discussed with Luke (identical to what HODR had been building in Bangladesh). Additional rubble walls reduce the amount of wood needed to make the walls and give a feeling of a more substantial ‘home’ structure. Each person in a family would be given 500RMB to construct a semi-permanent shelter so we were encouraging the villages to spend the money on corrugated cement roofing. It also joined two families in one “building” with a living room, bedroom and an exterior kitchen each, which reduces the material needed per family. This design would last them 2-3 years at least, which will see them though the rebuilding of the village and beyond, possibly to be used as crop storage. The design was then presented to the villagers by George over the course of the next hour, answering any of their questions.

The design was well received, as it involved them and their skills - therefore they would feel comfortable building them. After the presentation TNGOSPGTHDA and Luke jumped back on the bikes and headed back to the compound. Luke dashed back to Chengdu (3 hours south) in order to make the drawings to be printed so they could be distributed to other villages.