Mobile Crisis Construction-a truly ingenious solution to an age-old problem

Have you ever wondered what happens at a disaster scene or a battlefield after the cameras are turned off and the media circus has rolled on elsewhere? Do all those mounds of rubble and broken buildings suddenly disappear? Do all those dreadfully traumatised survivors go home to a nice cup of tea? You know as well as we do that the physical damage of war can take years, decades sometimes, to clear up. Which means a lot of people could be homeless or living in primitive tents and shanties for a very, very long time.

Until now. Because our researchers, bless them have come across a truly remarkable charity called Mobile Crisis Construction.[1] Who saw the need to provide solid, decent and healthy homes for all these pitiful victims as soon as possible. And what struck us here at LSS, humble researchers and Senior Management alike, was the astute simplicity with which they have gone about it. “You’ve got all that debris at the site”, they reasoned” all that broken brick, glass, etc. That’s not rubbish, that’s a raw material, mate!” So the first thing they do is move in a special mill which crushes it all up into a useable powder. Next the powder is put into a special oven and baked, on site, into bricks. Not just any bricks but ones with special grooves and sticky out bits on them so that anyone can run up a decent wall-after a bit of training of course. Their website is a trove of impressive statistics but here’s one for starters: they estimate that they can knock out enough bricks to create one school, or five large houses in a week[2]

Now gentle readers, we guess you have already spotted the true genius in their idea. No more supply chains! No more lorries carrying all those materials, skilled labourers and all the bureaucracy and red tape that goes with it. Instead, they take the factories to the site. You know we love inspired new solutions to ancient problems here (LSS passim). But this surely has to be one of the simplest and best so far? We wish this new venture every success and we hope you will too. Because all the suffering people of the world deserve something better.

[1]https://www.crisisconstruction.com/about-us/

[2]https://crisisconstruction.org/solutions/rapid-response-construction/

#war #refugees #construction #aid #housing #bricks #building #emergency