A Year After the Haiti Quake-800,000 Still Tenting-What Would M.L.K. Do?

Haiti was a good example of modern sales ptiches and pr. After a year the 5 billion dollars in promised financial help is generally still undelivered. There has been a tremendous volunteer effort, yet the prospects for innovative, competant adequate long term housing at low cost for most seems another unrealized dream.

One might believe that a year after the Earthquake the reverend martin Luther King actually would have had something to say about the state of affairs in haiti if he were alive. Well, we have Sean Penn-perhaps not quite as inspirational of a speaker but a guy who is trying, and Sarah Palin visted for a day to lift the spirits of the Haitians.

Buckminster Fuller's dome institue actually has well laid plans for emergency steel pipe dome housing. With a pipe bender one can make a variety of shape including a martian lander looking structure with a floor off the ground for comparatively peanuts. Why modern hyper-shape technology cannot be used for Haitian relief I cannot understand except with the application of some cynicism regarding the inability of society to pervasively modernize methods except perhaps in war.

http://synchronofile.com/geodesic-domes-and-earthquakes/

http://www.bfi.org/news-events/domes-for-haiti

http://www.domelivingmagazine.com/DomebuildersP.html

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2381118/posts emergency shelters

http://www.miqel.com/fuller_design_science/emergency_habitation_dome.html

There are some efforts to send domes to Haiti. Upgraded and reintensified design and application efforts should be coordinated by FEMA if only for the sake of practice for an American emergency. We recall how badly the toxic trailers went for Hurricane Katrina.

Solar, wind power, methane production from human waste and planting of crops-maybe Haiti should be carved up like Antarctica amidst nations with areas of responsibility in order to provide competition to get the best job done quickest. Even President Obama should want to field a crack low-cost alternative housing team to put together a quick 100,000 four person homes-why not?