2008 China Earthquake Blog

Original source:　Zhao Mu’s Blog　

http://zhaomu.blog.sohu.com/89698174.html

Translated by Keyboards Without Boarders.

The temporary houses are build in large scale now. Following pictures show how the houses are built.

First, a plain field needs to be found, which is not an easy task in the mountain area, where the earthquake hit. From the photo taken at June 9, 2008, it can be seen that some farm lands are taken and cleared up for the purpose.

The house can’t be put on earth directly. A layer of cement of 10~15cm （3～6 inches) is used as flat base. From the photo shown, the distance between the temp-houses is very tight.

Workers from Henan Tiangong Group are checking the sizes of the cement base. They need to finish 690 units in a very short time. It is hot and humid now. They have to work in extra hours in a pretty hostile weather.

The boards used for the temporary house are structured like sandwiches, with compressed poly-ethylene foam (5~15cm thick) covered by iron sheet on both sides. It is predicted that the plastic foam might be exposed when the sheet metal cover is eroded under the severe weather of the disaster zone. Then the foam will deform to small pieces and be blown away by winds. That may lead to a severe white pollution to the area. Further, when the temp houses are dismantled, how to treat or recycle the used material will be a daunting challenge.

Rows and rows of temp houses are built quickly.

The boards used are pretty light. Two workers can easily lift one without any machine.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.