Six members from the Dallas-based Christian disaster relief organization Texas Baptist Men have traveled to Antakya, Turkey to build simple homes for the victims of the devastating earthquakes that took place earlier this year. The semi-cylindrical metal structures are enabling the victims to move out of unsteady tents or cracked structures and move to a better and safer shelter.
The Christian Post reports:
A heart breaks as naturally as it loves. And traversing Antakya, Turkey, it crumbles like the buildings along the road.
This once bustling city of 400,000 people is now post-apocalyptic. What structures weren’t reduced to rubble by a February earthquake are leaning, cracked or both. More than 300,000 people became homeless in less than two minutes, many leaving the city.
Six volunteers from Dallas-based Texas Baptist Men came to this devastated landscape to put together simple homes for families who had lost theirs to the earthquake. The metal structures gave Turks safe places to live for the next several years, empowering them to move out of cracked structures or flimsy tents.
These semi-cylindrical shelters are being built in a place that feels like a scene out of a movie. Electricity is hard to come by; water is even harder. Don’t even ask about sewage.
Immediately following the earthquake, TBM sent 10,000 blankets and installed 10 community water systems in the region. Through trial and error, the volunteers from TBM have come up with the idea of semi-cylindrical homes that measures 3 meters by 9 meters and can be constructed swiftly by future volunteers.
Working alongside an in-country partner, TBM volunteers fought supply-chain issues and used the trial-and-error method to devise a custom template for housing in this situation. The team outlined a system whereby semi-cylindrical homes, measuring 3 meters by 9 meters, can be crafted and installed faster by future volunteers.
TBM has provided funds for 20 houses in the city after sending 10,000 blankets to the region and installing 10 community water systems immediately after the earthquake. That can’t meet the need of everyone here. No one team or one organization could. But the TBM team sought to do what it could.
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