Spring 2011 in North America is turning into a wild ride - floods, fires, tornadoes... (DarkSyde has a link to Dr. Jeff Masters WunderBlog with some sobering data and imagery.) Whether or not you want to speculate if this is a consequence of climate change, the problem remains of cleaning up and recovery after disaster strikes. How about we start thinking about doing it smarter? IF this is going to be the 'new normal' we really need to do so, and even if not - it's still a good idea.
UPDATE: here's a link to Doug Kahn's post over at Down With Tyranny that suggests the flooding on the Mississippi may be big enough to re-route the way it reaches the Gulf of Mexico, bypassing New Orleans completely. Not directly related to the thrust of this diary, other than pointing out just how badly we're going to need to think about how we respond to disasters. (h/t to Digby)
Right now there are thousands of displaced families who've lost homes and even whole communities to weather inflicted disasters. Conventional housing has a long lead time in replacing damaged structures. A response to similar events in the past has been emergency trailers, homes mass-produced in factories, stockpiled, and rushed to disaster sites.
In the case of the infamous FEMA trailers after Katrina, they extended the disaster for months and years afterwards. They were in many cases toxic to live in, looked like well.... trailers, often were lumped together in horrendous mass camps, and at best were only a temporary solution that for many has become permanent.
Granted, they are a quick solution for people who have lost everything, but the way they are built, set up, maintained, and disposed of creates problems that can be avoided. There are a lot of different aspects to the idea of temporary housing represented by the FEMA trailer that could stand to be reconsidered. It's a classic case of penny-wise, pound-foolish policy that doesn't really make sense over the long term.
Now, given that disaster victims are given the trailers for free - for a limited time - and are supposed to be reclaimed by the government, it's easy to see why there's an incentive to make them as cheaply as possible. (Do I really have to spell out anti-government politicians complaining about tax dollars being spent on luxury housing for poor people?) The problem with this approach (among many) is that corners get cut, you end up with a lot of trailers that can't be reused, you waste a lot of materials and energy building them, and you end up prolonging the effects of the disaster the longer it takes to move people into better housing - if ever. There's several different ways to do this differently.
Here's a blast from the past, a future that never was: the Dymaxion House. Designed by Buckminster Fuller to be mass-produced largely of aluminum and installed on site quickly, it represents a good starting point for rethinking emergency housing. While only two prototypes were built, there are some concepts in the house that bear examination. (You can take a look at a survivor here.)
Here are some ideas for your consideration:
Bucky designed a home that was heated and cooled by natural means, that made its own power, was earthquake and storm-proof, and made of permanent, engineered materials that required no periodic painting, reroofing, or other maintenance. You could easily change the floor plan as required - squeezing the bedrooms to make the living room bigger for a party, for instance.
Downdraft ventilation drew dust to the baseboards and through filters, greatly reducing the need to vacuum and dust. O-Volving Shelves required no bending; rotating closets brought the clothes to you. The Dymaxion House was to be leased, or priced like an automobile, to be paid off in five years. All this would be possible now if houses were engineered, mass-produced, and sold like cars. $40,000.00 sounds about right.
In 1946, Bucky actually built a later design of the Dymaxion House (also known as the Wichita House). I had the honor to lead a bunch of volunteers that took it apart in 1992. It was mostly intact despite being abandoned (except for the incumbent herd of insolent, astoundingly filthy raccoons) for several decades. The 747 First-Class ambiance was faded and smelly, but you could still sense the elegance of a living room with a 33-foot window.
The Dymaxion's round shape minimized heat loss and the amount of materials needed, while bestowing the strength to successfully fend off a 1964 tornado that missed by only a few hundred yards. And the Dymaxion only weighs about 3000 pounds versus the 150 tons of an average home
Aluminum and steel construction lends itself to recycling; the shape conserves materials and energy use. The central support mast simplifies installing a foundation - all that's needed is a solid footprint for the mast. Other features include a roof that collects rainwater, which could be used for things like washing clothes, dishes, flushing toilets, etc. Update the design using technology we now have and the possibilities expand. Solar panels and some means of storing power for use during night hours would make the houses livable even before repairs to the power grid. This means they wouldn't all have to consolidated in parks - they could be installed wherever a site could be cleared. And utility bills would be a lot lower after support infrastructure was rebuilt. Add in wiring for data links (video/cable, phone, internet, etc.) and the homes would be way ahead of conventional buildings.
The modular construction and standardization offers real advantages. Down the road people would have the option of installing upgrades on a plug and play basis. It would and should be possible to design expansion modules that could be added to the basic core structure for people who need more space. (Given enough homes like this in an installed base, it's easy to see an after-market customization industry springing up.) And for those who think the design is 'weird', it's still a huge improvement over a FEMA trailer.
So here's the deal: instead of supplying disaster victims with cheap boxes to survive in on a 'temporary' basis, offer them basic permanent housing instead, designed from day one to be energy efficient, resource thrifty, and low impact on the environment. Mass-production makes them affordable, light weight modular construction makes it easy to transport them where they're needed, and the design makes them easy to install and quick to make them livable. The initial higher cost to the government is compensated for by the fact that people can get back to living their lives much sooner; couple it with some method of financing that lets people take ownership of the homes if they desire, and there is no reason why this program couldn't work far better than what we have now.
Here's a suggestion: FEMA or maybe HUD could set up some kind of competition to design an upgraded Dymaxion house, and fund the construction of several different prototypes for testing and evaluation. Given the natural disasters that take place every year around the country, there would be no shortage of sites where prototypes could undergo real world evaluation in different climates on a pilot project basis. This incremental approach could be used to fine tune designs, prove technologies, and spark innovation in other approaches to disaster housing.
We have to do better than we are now in any case. If we're going to keep having natural disasters, there's no reason why we can't use the opportunity to learn and improve as we go. And who knows? If the designs work as well as they could, they just might shake up the conventional housing market, help us with our energy problems, and get us thinking about other things we could do better.
Think of it as disaster socialism instead of disaster capitalism.
Updated by xaxnar at Sat May 07, 2011 at 08:45 PM PDT
UPDATE: Thanks for the Spotlighting! When I get a chance, I'll try to put up a follow-on piece to consider some of the larger issues in rebuilding after disasters. As noted in a comment, it really doesn't make sense to rebuild as before if that means repeating mistakes that will repeat a disaster.