by Lucilla Marvel




Just 3 days after the Hurricane Katrina Disaster, Allegra Fuller Snyder, head of the Buckminster Fuller Institute Emergency Shelter Special Projects Committee alerted the Institute about the possibility of collaborating on the delivery and set up of a Fuller-inspired autonomous shelter unit to Mississippi, to be used as a field office for disaster relief workers. Moving quickly, and mindful of Fuller's words that there can be "emergence through emergency" we decided to raise funds for a ready--to--deliver transitional structure of 750 square feet."Life has been intuitively and unconsciously evolving its own emancipation along the route of chance-happenings." (RBF. Nine Chains to the Moon, 1938, p.240)

The devastating destruction from Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the Earthquake in Pakistan produced a worldwide outpouring of contributions, resources and ideas for short and long term shelter recovery. The Emergency Shelter Committee of the BFI became involved within days of both disasters, working with its network of temporary shelter designers and manufacturers, to respond to the immediate need for shelter deployment both in the Gulf States Region and Pakistan. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, BFI has been a collaborator in a long-term shelter recovery initiative in Mississippi.

BFI's immediate response to the disasters was to link up with World Shelter, Inc., a non-profit organization, which had developed lightweight structures, based on RBF design science criteria. BFI was an early sponsor of R & D with World Shelter. For Hurricane Katrina, the Emergency Shelter Committee raised funds to pay for the construction of two autonomous living units consisting of three 250 square foot shelters. These autonomous living units include solar panels, a quiet generator, high efficiency lights, a composting toilet, and other equipment. The Emergency Shelter Committee was particularly attracted to the autonomous unit concept, understanding that what was provided for the immediate response stage of the disaster could serve for long-term shelter usage. The autonomous living units were first sent to Bay St. Louis, on the coast of Mississippi. The three 250 square foot units (750 square feet overall) were deployed and used for housing relief organizations working in the field with residents who were able to return to temporary shelters in the area. The autonomous living units are now (12/09/05) waiting to be deployed in their entirety (the three shelters plus the solar panels and other equipment) in East Biloxi, Mississippi, where they will form part of the center for the long-term collaborative initiative, or in the coastal area to the southwest of New Orleans. It is the expectation of World Shelter that the units will be set up before December 23rd. Updates will be posted on bfi.org.

With the experience and contacts generated by the Katrina Disaster, BFI was able to respond to requests for shelters that could be immediately deployed following the Pakistan earthquake. Given the vast numbers of displaced and acute climate needs of shelter in Pakistan, BFI put World Shelter, Inc and other shelter providers in contact with Pakistan relief organizations and funders. As of 12/09/05, the Pakistan government has opted for very inexpensive temporary shelters made in China. The shelters provide inadequate protection against the cold and are flammable. Meanwhile, World Shelter has continued to develop 250 square foot hard shell geodesic domes that could be ready for manufacturing and deployment with the idea that the domes could be demounted and reused.

Cognizant that long-term recovery challenge is as important as short-term temporary housing needs, and searching for a way to link the two in the Katrina aftermath, BFI collaborated with other organizations to prepare a proposal called the "Neighborhood Cluster Initiative" (NCI) for the Gulf Coast Disaster Recovery. Together with World Shelter, Inc, Architects Without Borders, Inc, Architecture For Humanity, Inc., SCRAMM (Shelter Closure Rehabilitation Assessment and Medical Mitigation) and Carl Design Center of the University of Mississippi, the collaboration developed the NCI plan to enable the Gulf Coast communities to rebuild their communities in phases. The clusters are a way of bringing residents back into the region, as close to their destroyed houses as possible, providing neighborhood-oriented transitional housing, set up in small clusters of temporary shelters. These temporary shelters will enable residents to focus their efforts on community-led reconstruction of long term or permanent housing with the guidance of skilled and trained professionals committed to community based revitalization. The purpose is to rehabilitate the region's housing stock and the economic infrastructure with community initiative and leadership moving toward integrated development. The NCI has been designed to serve as a pilot project, replicable in other areas.
The collaboration has worked with Mississippi state and local officials as well as federal officials who have endorsed the NCI concept. The first major step was to identify sites in Mississippi where the Neighborhood Clusters Initiatives can take place. Following a lack of resolution on the part of the local government for the site in Bay St. Louis, East Biloxi has been chosen as the first site, where a resource, recovery and rehabilitation service center will be set up. Enterprise Foundation and Architecture for Humanity are providing the initial support to establish this neighborhood cluster and service center. The on-the-ground coordinator of the collaboration is Sherry-Lea Bloodworth of SCRAMM. A Mississippi resident, she has been involved with the Katrina recovery since personally evacuating 700 residents from the storm damaged Gulf Coast area. As of 12/09/05, the service center has been set up in East Biloxi to help organize volunteer housing efforts, long-term planning and architecture and financial consulting. In the case of East Biloxi, most of the residents have rehoused themselves either in tents or FEMA-provided trailers while preparing to rebuild their permanent housing.

Disaster recovery is a complex, unwieldy, fluid, and often too-bureaucratic process. The larger the disaster, the more difficult the response. The time lag between valid proposals for disaster recovery and action is unfortunately far too long. The results are not always anticipated. One achievement of the NCI proposal to date has been to change FEMA's approach in Mississippi to linking transitional shelter to long-term housing. As reported in the Jackson, Mississippi Sun Herald on 11/13/05 "Something new: transitional parks", FEMA will adopt a policy of "transitional communities, designed to accommodate permanent housing but using temporary evacueesa concept that represents a significant shift from the norm." Bruce LeBel of World Shelter has described this as a good example of the "trim-tab" effect. The creation of the NCI concept and the presence of the ready-to-deploy autonomous living units served to spark a change in policy and implementation.

BFI and the Emergency Shelter Committee, headed by Allegra Fuller Snyder, invite all who are interested in emergency shelters, as well as linking them to long term recovery to communicate with the shelter committee at bfi.org, and to check out the shelter area on the bfi.org website.