HAITI / BETTER BUILDINGS

The recunstruction efforts to rebuild Haiti are underway. However, according to experts, to avoid replication of the devastation of 12th of January, the construction standards need to be improved.

After five months of evaluation, a team made of national and international engineers under the authority of Ministry of Public Works is now running practical test in order to make a universal guidelines. This guidelines should allow masons throughout Haiti to build and repair the damaged houses in a uniformed and standardized way.

SOUNDBITE (English) Michael King Myamoto International:
“We are breaking the cells out, like this. This way, when we put the mortar on the blocks, instead of putting the mortar across the whole face, which you can see is very week here, it just slipped off. We are going to put the mortar just on the face shelves. So when we put (another) block on it, the mortar will actually move into the face shelf and interlock with the blocks which will give you a physical bond between two blocks and not count on the glue bond with the mortar.”

They have chosen this area of the capital Port-au-Prince to test these new standards and these group of masons are the first beneficenaries.

SOUNDBITE (French) Alban Lhoumeau, United Nations Office for Project Services:
“An international team of engineers assisted by engineers of MTPTC, are currently working on a document that will precise the technical norms which will be then available to all reconstruction teams, both national and international. We will also put in place a verification system to make sure that norms are respected.”

The goal is to use material such as cement blocks, iron and mortar available to local masons: Technology also needs to be accessible to everyone so that even small business masons are capable of building safer buildings.

SOUNDBITE (English) Michael King, Myamoto International:
“Our testing shows that if you are going to it the way we are going to do it today, then this wall will have three to four hundred percent more capacity than it had before.”

The sand is another issue as its not the kind that can be used as a building material. Haitian masons also have a habit of using inadequate amount of cement and and then mixing it with too much water.

SOUNDUP (Creole) MPTPC Engineer:
“We will use less mortar and more blocks, which means same amount of work.”

The good measure appears to be three buckets of sand, one bucket of cement mixed with half bucket of water. That makes mortar as strong as recommended by international norms of construction.

SOUNDBITE (English) Kit Myamoto, Miyamoto International:
“You want to make this act as one wall. So, actually, stronger and tight compact grout and thinner is better than the loose, week, thick mortar. So that’s what we’ll change. This loose, week, thick, we are going to make strong, tight thin, compact. That will make this as a whole wall much stronger than this”

Masons also need to wet blocks before placing them in the wall. That will make the wall even more solid. After every three layers of blocks, they place an iron reinforcement.

SOUNDBITE (Creole) Roger Refuse, Worker:
“Steel construction is new to us, as well other new things we learn today. It will help us build better.”

For engineers of Miyamoto International, specialized in reconstructing earthquake engineering, all the details matter. They came to Haiti shortly after the earthquake, in cooperation with Pan American Developpment Fund. They are helping Haitian government by sharing their knowledge and experience.

SOUNDBITE (French) Alban Chouteau, United Nations Office for Project Services:
“Training is essential for us as a way to transfer the knowledge. So we will start with training of trainers, and this trainers will go in the field and train the masons as well as teams that are working on the field.”

Construction in Haiti by large was always done in an informal way, due to the dire social and economic conditions in the country. The forecoming guidelines will be useful for the informal sector of construction, where lack of money or knowledge often makes dangerous, rather than safe homes.