Plastic Homes to Aid Philippine Quake Victims

A San Diego group is donating an unusual form of aid to earthquake victims in the Philippines--plastic houses.

The earthquake left an estimated 90,000 people homeless and exposed to the annual rainy season that also has hit the area. So WorldCare Inc., a nonprofit relief organization, will provide 70 of its lightweight, waterproof, durable shelters.

The 3-year-old San Diego group is the only agency that has the plastic huts, which were developed by La Mesa resident Dean Nauman, WorldCare’s technical director.

“Tents are very hot, and they also mildew,” Nauman said. “This gives much more comfort, and they are less costly.”

The 7-by-14-foot huts come in kits with pieces that can be quickly and easily fitted together. Made of polypropylene, a polymer originally designed for NASA, they withstand chemicals and water, and provide insulation equivalent to 1 inch of board or 6 inches of concrete.

“We have them precut, and we simply unfold them, lay the floor down, attach the walls, raise them up and attach the roof,” WorldCare President Harry Boyd Williams said.

George Capsis, a WorldCare board member, said he met Wednesday in New York with Citibank to try and get a $500,000 loan to finance more houses that can be built on site in the Philippines.

The money also would help set up a factory to make the plastic houses so they can be stockpiled and made available to any country that needs them, Williams said.

After the Mexico City earthquake, about 300 of these same inexpensive, plastic houses were put up, and many of them are still standing because they were upgraded and converted into classrooms, Capsis said. The group also sent units to Bangladesh after the flood a few years ago.

WorldCare got a call for help last week from the Philippine consulate in Los Angeles. The consulate knew about the group’s plastic houses because Williams had contacted it once before to donate some houses after a typhoon.

The consulate could not take Williams up on his offer then, but the plastic houses were not forgotten.

“They wanted to give assistance before, but we had no means to send it (to the Philippines) then,” said Melba Lim, consul of the Philippine Consulate. “We really appreciate what WorldCare is doing.”

All the details for sending the first shipment of plastic houses haven’t been worked out yet with the consulate, but Williams said he hopes to have the houses on their way by the end of the week.

The houses are not designed to meet U.S. building code standards, although some have been used for migrant workers in Washington.

But, when people are faced with a crisis as they are in the Philippines, they provide a short-term, inexpensive solution.

Each of the houses costs about $190, so to make up the cost of donating the 70 units, WorldCare is looking for donations, Williams said.

The July 16 earthquake measured 7.7 on the Richter scale and rocked Manila and the main Philippine island of Luzon.

WorldCare officials said the plastic houses, while fulfilling a basic human need for people in Third World countries, can also be environmentally profitable in the United States.

“We can make this material out of waste plastic, garbage plastic,” Capsis said. “We could recycle enormous amounts of plastic into housing for the Third World.”