Zundao
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.
