It’s the shortest day of the year in Chile and the rain is coming down. It is cold and wet. As we celebrate the new year and the return of the sun, thousands of people in the surrounding region are living in government supplied shacks… affectionately termed "Mediagua" or half water. Most of them are leaking with the rain, and the wind is coming in. You can find photos here.

The government has not yet started the reconstruction effort. We imagine they are trying to get through the winter with temporary emergency housing, and to begin construction in the spring, when the dust settles a little. Here in El Manzano we are doing our best to inject common sense into the debate. Many are listening. Small strategic actions can have wide repercussions, and though we cannot take the credit for the actions of others, we can be sure that our voice has resounded widely in Chile and many are following the lead.

What would you choose? A cement and treated pine box, designed and built by someone you have never met, squeezed as tight as possible with the neighbours, with very little outdoor private space? Or would you choose a beautiful home with natural materials, designed and constructed by you and your family, with plenty of space, and your own food to boot? One might assume that common sense would prevail. What’s missing? Choice? 

So then it becomes a matter of pragmatism, as the so called planner, shapes attention, and counters misinformation as best they can.  

Design with Principles

El Manzano has embarked on a mission to provide alternatives for Chileno people; to show people how they can create their own permanent, earthquake-proof housing made with local materials, local labour, at an affordable price. 

The original project was in usual permaculture style, a strategic and multifunctional intention to affect as many people as possible, to be a catalytic learning event. With the support of the Artists Project Earth (relief, recovery and resilience… we speak the same language) and the Permaculture Research Institute (now in Chile) a project was developed to assist people to meet their own immediate housing needs, to design their own resilient housing and settlements, to quickly recover from the devastating Earthquake of February 2010, and to build long-term resilience to future disaster and disruption. Having raised only a small portion of the required funding, we set out to maximise available resources, to catch and store the energy required and deliver the most bang for buck. 

When we design with principles, people and ecology in mind, our solutions are often distinct to those discovered by the logic of the mainstream system. When we design for haste and minimum cost we compromise on things like quality and materials efficiency, well being and long term security. We tend to forget about talking to local people and fitting in with the place. Permaculture design on the other hand, enables us to create low cost solutions that are much more resilient, because we see the problem and we have a long term perception. A permaculture designer sees opportunities and local resources, knowledge and skills. Coming from a systems perspective they link elements together, investing in the health of the system. Combined, work can be more efficient, we can reduce materials costs by seeing available free materials. If we put our heads together we can save time and money. Sometimes a small change will have big effects.   

Design & Construction  

The design was made as participatory as possible, with the community an integral part of the design and decision making team. A participatory approach takes time, and will often lead us in unexpected directions, but in the end a better solution can be found. You can read about the design stages here. And here about the El Manzano in Transition process here. 

Construction started in the first week of May. You can read about the first stage here by Craig Mackintosh. Using local materials, unmilled timber cut directly from surrounding forests with a chainsaw, straw harvested nearby, recycled adobe from the earthquake collapses, and the soil beneath our feet we trained a local team in the use of roundpole and earth construction techniques. The community has awakened to a new possibility for their own homes in the future, and is learning together, that many hands make light work.

The superadobe technique has been modified a little, using sand from the site (a resource we have in abundance) to fill sacks, mixed with 10% cement and laid as a foundation wall. This same technique was used to make the floor, with a thin layer of cement and very little steel on top. We have tried to minimise the use of cement and steel at every step, but have been hindered by the locals who won’t imagine standing on anything made of clay in the next earthquake, and the need to get the house habitable as soon as possible.

The roof went up quickly with a 22 cm layer of light clay straw compacted into the cavity between roof joists. We have heard of this technique being used locally without clay with 60+ years of life. If it stays dry we are hopeful it will provide insulation for a long time to come… another research project. 

The walls are up, two non-load bearing layers of 2×2 pine (we could have used small diameter pseudo acacia and eucalyptus cut from the forest to reduce costs) with a 25 cm sandwich of light clay straw in between. With all the rain our primary concern is the drying time of the straw. Based on the experience of friends with the same technique in Chile, we are concerned about fungus growing in the straw and affecting the timber. Oh for a dry season. Chile is well known for its dry sunny winter periods… we have our fingers crossed and are exploring other options for drying the walls efficiently.

Budget

The final budget for materials and labour is 2 million pesos or $US3700, around US$125 per square metre. This is an affordable house. The main cost has been the roofing, the cement for the floor and labour. We haven’t managed to stretch the budget to pay the professional services of the design team, but intend that the house is a model that can be improved and replicated, a product we can offer in coming months.

The gains have outweighed the cost, and we don’t need a cost:benefit analysis to tell us. A community team has developed itself as a competent unit able to deliver on time and under budget. The house is beautiful. It will last a few good 8 point earthquakes yet. Wanna bet?

Learning

Many small mistakes have been made, reviewed and redesigned for the next house. This has been a continuous learning event for the community and the team. In coming weeks the team moves its focus to begin construction of a second house. We feel more prepared and more experienced for a spring and summer construction process ahead, with tested materials and techniques in the construction of a living university campus. You can be involved in this catalytic learning event. Stay tuned. Happy new year.

My time in Chile is almost at an end. But, before I go, I want to share with you the present and future plans for transitioning the community here in El Manzano. They are not insignificant.

The second community meeting I attended during my stay was to discuss these plans and solicit community input and participation. It is the end of the agricultural season here, so people are in high spirits and also have a little extra time for contemplative discussion.

But before I jump straight into the meeting it’d be good to get a grip on practicalities of advancement here.

Financials

Funding for transitioning at El Manzano comes primarily from the following three revenue streams:

1) The farm, consisting of 120 hectares of land: 80 ha of Zone 5 (70 ha of primarily pine and some eucalyptus trees and 10 ha of regenerating forest – i.e. re-establishing natives along stream beds and borders to protect the watershed and improve eco-system services, aiming to eventually become 30% of the property), 5 ha of organic blueberries, 30 ha of broadscale horticulture (horses used for cultivation as much as possible), 2 ha of orchards, and 3 in Zone 1 intensive gardening. The farm is entirely chemical-free, implements permaculture principles throughout and is steadily transitioning to increase diversity and reduce dependence. It currently employs seven of the villagers, and others work, as expressed in the last post, on a very appreciative voluntary basis so they can share in the farm’s harvest – essentially bartering labour for food.

2) Eco Escuela: Eco Escuela El Manzano translates to ‘Apple Tree Eco School’. It is the educational business set up by Grifen and Javiera, and includes other family members as business partners and teachers-in-training. The school has trained 145 students, now Permaculture Design Certificate holders, since the school was launched two years ago, and is poised to teach many more (more on that below). In addition two students have completed their two-year Permaculture Diploma here (Eco Escuela is also Gaia University Chile, the only Gaia University node in Latin America), and 33 more are current diploma works-in-progress. Funding through permaculture education is, as regular readers will know, part of our Permaculture Master Plan concept, where sites become financially self-sufficient, and self-replicating, through education – a proven and efficient way to move permaculture forward sustainably.

El Manzano’s outdoor class, when weather conditions invite

3) Grants: Funding is sought from outside individuals or organisations for various endeavours where possible. An example: two years ago the family met with the local community and discussed the need to transition the village to meet future resource constraints caused by energy descent (peak oil) and climate change. They determined to petition the Chilean Ministry of the Environment for funding to help implement initiatives that would reduce the village’s impact on its surrounding whilst increasing their resilience. Jorge and Carolina were subsequently delegated the task of creating the application, and their request was rewarded with support by way of U.S.$16,500. Another example is funding for the house project, a demonstration of sustainable post-quake redevelopment, where U.S.$5,000 was secured via Artists Project Earth, and of course the assistance of the Permaculture Research Institute, and the likes of you!

All of these aspects take time, dedication, persistence and vision. The good news is these traits don’t seem to be in short supply here.

The community discusses a possible budget

Back to the meeting

The main point of the meeting was to look at the financials – how much funding they had, and options for expenditure. Central in this discussion were plans the family and the community had long been brainstorming, which would utilise some of the family’s 120 ha mentioned above to develop new building and land features to benefit both Eco Escuela (the eco school) and the community. It was decided at this meeting that the plans had ripened sufficiently in maturity of evolution and consensus in thought, so that Angel Carrillo, the architect profiled in a previous post, could begin formal designs based on community feedback for this development.

The meeting broke into groups to brainstorm the design concepts

And then the three groups shared their ideas before the entire meeting

Until everyone came to happy agreement, and even applause!

There’s more than can be described within the constraints of this post, but in a nutshell, the new development would fulfil multiple functions:

1. increase the capacity of the villagers to work together in mutually beneficial ways to improve their lives along highly sustainable lines – one example is in converting the Adobe House into a food storage and preserving facility, village bakery, and potentially even an outdoor cafe supplied with farm produce, all providing employment for villagers and healthy food options for the increasing student numbers.
2. utilise some of the land to build an additional classroom that can be utilised by both the existing children’s school and Eco Escuela, and to create additional facilities (kitchen, accommodations, etc.) that can also be utilised by the growing training centre and the villagers.
3. create public spaces and environmental elements – a walkable landscape – that will benefit all of the above.

The goal, and one that seems entirely within reach, is for the community to become a beacon of realism, inspiration and reskilling – making not just the school a source of education, but also making the entire settlement a lesson in appropriate development, and cooperative endeavour. The designs being worked on today, once turned into reality, will essentially see a permaculture university in the midst of the village – with maximum participation and benefits for the villagers themselves.

Reversing the trend

These initiatives for El Manzano have great potential to not only stem the flow of rural migrants into cities, where they become wholly dependent on a collapsing money economy, but to actually reverse it. As the quality of life here improves, and resiliency builds – and the social order elsewhere continues to unravel – sons, daughters, brothers will notice the change during their visits and will inevitably decide to move back home and get involved. This is another motivating factor for the villagers who have up until recently seen their community steadily disintegrate as people head to regional capitals in search of work.

People want to see their families come to life again, and this work is making it happen.

Culture of plants, not careless propagation

One thing that needs to be clear, El Manzano is wholly unlike many ‘alternative communities’ we hear about, or have been involved in, where several well meaning but oft-naive folk decide to converge on a newly purchased property due to their shared, idealistic vision of the lifestyle they want to possess. That eco-village scenario is said to have a ninety percent failure rate. Comparable to plants being mismatched with soil and climate types, throwing westernised individuals together in situations out of their element can be rife with tension, misunderstandings, maladjustments and heartbreak.

Instead, El Manzano is about inspiring an existing community, in situ, to consider their future, and to begin to work together to achieve common goals – goals based on an increasing understanding of current events and a determination to meet them head on. The work here is taking a village and transforming it from within. This is the transition approach – one that arguably has a far higher likelihood of success.

Better to give

One thing I noted during my stay was the feeling of peace oozing from the Carrion family. Rather than cling to land ownership as an inherited ‘right’, or narrowly considering it as merely a means of securing short term gain, they’re gaining great satisfaction from finding ways to use it to create something of far greater value, and in doing so feel a weight is being lifted from their shoulders.

If this attitude were to become infectious, the world’s troubles could dissipate rather fast.

Continue on to read Part X: Eco Escuela El Manzano, a Nice Place to Learn

The site awaits workers in the early morning

The building stage of Miguel’s house has been underway for a few days now, so I figured it’s time to let you all have a peek. I’ll make this post mostly pictorial – but if you have questions or suggestions, feel free to comment/discuss.

The posts were all sourced from trees growing within
a few hundred metres of the site

Not that the dog could care less

Jose Carrión, brother to Javiera and Jorge, gets started
on framing for the foundation

The architect and builder discuss….

Wladimir and Santiago get mixing concrete by hand. The sand and stones are
all sourced locally (the sand from the nearby riverbed)

Minimal concrete is used – here for the nine structural supports
(as per the design plans shown at bottom of this post)

Stones are stamped down into the perimeter trench

Which is then laid with a superadobe base

The earth and sand dug out of the trench makes up most of the bags’ contents

Barbed wire goes between the bag layers, to keep them in place

Like the stones underneath, the superadobe bags are compacted by hand

Meanwhile, the posts are being prepared…

…before being bolted into place

It’s starting to come together!!

There’s nothing like unwinding around the campfire after a hard day’s work

Continue on to read Part VIII: a Little Historical Context

Meet Angel Carrillo (left) and Santiago Naudon (right). Angel and Santiago are both architects – architects with a major green bent. After the meeting last week these two likeable and enthusiastic fellows have been drawing up design plans to create the two new demonstration homes for the El Manzano community.

Miguel (again, see last week’s post) will be first to see his house get built. Rather than dictate design ideas to Miguel, Angel and Santiago worked with him over a few days, showing drafts and making recommendations, until a final design plan emerged.

Santiago, Angel and Miguel discuss plans at Miguel’s house site

The resulting plans (see diagrams at bottom), are an attempt to find a happy balance between minimising environmental impact (creating a home with low ongoing energy demand and using materials sourced as locally as possible), minimising cost (both because of minimal secured funds and also to ensure the structure is feasible for most Chileans) and creating a home that is both highly comfortable and strong enough to take the worst Chile’s earthquakes can throw at them.

After the plans were completed they were shown to the builders put in charge of the construction process.

Angel explains the design to the builders

Some of the design features include:

• aspect to maximise winter sun and increase summer shade
• fire in centre
• wet back fire (heats water). The house may have a solar hot water heater, if funds allow
• Made primarily of straw and light clay – flexible materials (high straw content) and excellent insulation
• Timber frame, which makes the house flexible for earthquakes
• low roof for faster heating
• 25cm window sills made of stone, to absorb heat during the day and give it off again in the night. Eaves are designed so that only the winter sun will reach the stone sill
• front door in north, back door in south – when both opened in summer it will create a cross-flow to draw cool air through the house
• Capacity to take a green roof

The house site, with new house positioned for sun

Designed for single occupancy, but allowing for guests to access sanitation
facilities (left) without needing to go through Miguel’s bedroom (right). Visitors
can access through the rear of the house. Bedroom window gets morning sun,
living room throughout the day.

Roof designed to be able to host a green roof. Eaves the right length to
protect from hot summer sun, but to open home to winter rays.

Front view of house

Continue on to read Part VI: Increasing Water Security

The ‘Adobe House’, El Manzano’s ecological demonstration house.
All photos © copyright Craig Mackintosh

In the middle of the little El Manzano village, on display to all in the community, is the ‘Adobe House’. This demonstration house is a project by Eco Escuela El Manzano to demonstrate to the community several low-tech but effective techniques for improving quality of life whilst reducing a home’s impact on the environment.

Houses made from adobe bricks are common in Chile, although, increasingly, like many ‘developing’ countries, people are turning towards energy disastrous concrete instead. The Adobe House was not purpose built – rather, it is actually a very old house that was retrofitted in 2008. It is thus a good example of what many villagers could do if they had a mind to.

I’ll share a few of its features.

Against one wall they built a simple conservatory. The earth brick wall absorbs heat during the day, warming the home, and radiates it back out during the night – to ensure an extended frost-free period for vegetables. Well positioned terracotta tiles or other high thermal mass elements can increase this energy buffering as well (even just barrels of water can do the trick). Though not incorporated here, another addition can be to add vents between the conservatory and the home to allow excess heat to pass into the house.

During the hotter parts of the year the ends of the conservatory are easily opened up.

Outside the house and conservatory there’s a trellis hung heavy in grape. It creates an excellent, and edible, shade area under which sits an outdoor table and benches for summer breakfasts and lunches. The foliage dies back during the winter months to let more sunshine through.

Next to this sits a fantastic earth oven. And yes, the bread was as good as it looks:

Other elements include the all-important manual pump for water – without which this community would have suffered dearly during the recent earthquake (see Part I) – and a greywater system for biologically cleaning household waste water, returning it, slowly, to the water table after several stages of natural cleaning.

Potty Training

The ‘centrepiece’ of this demonstration site, however, is this:

A composting toilet (or ‘dry toilet’ as they’re called here)

This elevated, dual-chamber throne room (similar to the one at Zaytuna Farm) serves as the home’s fertiliser collection station. When enconsed therein, or thereon, as the case may be, the room is notable for its lack of odor. Any odor.

Although composting humanure should be regarded as an urgent… um… call of nature everywhere (the world is running out of potable water, and yet we’re crapping in it, and we still haven’t come to terms with the significance of phosphorus recycling yet either), it is arguably even more important here in El Manzano.

I say this for two connected reasons: 1) most of the community here rely on ‘long drop’ toilets (simple holes dug into the ground), and 2) the water table in El Manzano is incredibly close to the surface – in many places barely a metre below ground.

In case the obvious eludes you – this means that these smelly, bacteria-filled repositories will be seeping into the water table…. Yes, this is the same water table they’re pumping water from so as to quench their thirsty lips. If it weren’t for the very low population density here I think we could be looking at some serious health issues.

The Eco Escuela El Manzano team are therefore turning the problem into the solution, by demonstrating how a potentially disastrous waste stream can instead become a resource. The Abobe House has a constant stream of students and interns residing in it – all of whom are building site fertility rather than contributing to water contamination.

Continue on to read Part V: The Design Stage

Please consider contributing to this worthy cause – you can do so via donation links on this page!

Further Reading:

• Compost Toilet – Farallones (237kb PDF)
• Compost Toilet – Minimus (459kb PDF)
• Urine-Diverting Toilet, Vietnam (3.4mb PDF)
• Low-Cost Compost Toilets (3.45mb PDF)
• The Humanure Handbook

The chicken/egg argument comes into play here – as a community builds new homes, while the new homes build the community.

Miguel Louis Suazo looks forward to moving out of his shed
[Picture taken with ultra wide angle lens - room is much smaller than it appears]

The night of my arrival almost two weeks ago, I was invited to an El Manzano village meeting. Being dog tired, I wondered if I shouldn’t skip it so I could work more efficiently the next day, but, nevertheless, asked what would be on the table for discussion. It was being held to discuss who, amongst the many poor in the community, should receive the new earthquake-resistant, eco-friendly demonstration homes Grifen, Javiera and team were busy trying to secure funding for.

Initially these homes were intended to replace the two homes damaged in the quake, but one of these families, camped out with children in tents with the nights getting colder, needed to work quickly to put a roof over their own heads. Waiting for funding was not an option. With a lot of assistance from the El Manzano community, they managed to bring a replacement in from nine kilometres away on a truck (pink house pictured below).

This event was, Grifen described, the first time he observed the community really getting together to unselfishly support one family. It seems to have set a precedent for what, you will observe from the rest of this article, may well become a continuing trend.

Having one of the homes already replaced has really worked well in this instance, as many of the villagers here do not have a place they can call home. Some families are even split up from necessity – sons, daughters, husbands, wives, are billeted throughout the village where a corner can be found for them. Now there was the opportunity for this ‘extra’ home to find a good… er… home! Given this understanding, I wondered what the mood of the meeting would be, and how it would progress. I wondered how such a decision would/could be made. Who should get the new home?

Needless to say, I was going to the meeting!

The object was for the villagers to work together to build two low-cost, simple, sustainable and comfortable demonstration homes – which would then be showcased to local government as sensible examples of reconstruction for the recent earthquake, for future disasters, and, of course, for better housing technologies for all Chileans.

Representatives of the village families met together to discuss who should
get the new demonstration houses to be built

Grifen lead out in the meeting. Rather than dive right in and try to immediately ‘vote’ or otherwise find a suitable owner for the new ‘extra’ home, Grifen instead asked the representatives how this decision should be made. In other words, Grifen didn’t come with a pre-thought idea of how to go about this, but put it on the community to agree on a plan for their own process of elimination.

The community decided to make a grid on the board, that would be a matrix of the few simple parameters that all community residents fit within:

1. People with land but no house
2. People with land but a ‘crap’ house
3. People with no land and a crap house
4. People with no land and no house

They then started to write down where each family fitted within these categories. Some people had a ‘crap’ house to live in, but were living on land owned by their employer, so they didn’t want to put community effort and funding into land that wasn’t their own. They agreed that they should eliminate families within this part of the matrix.

People without land to build a house on were ruled out from necessity.

Finally it was decided that one older, single man should have the extra home – as he had land, but didn’t have a house. Funding was tight, but there should be enough for two small single resident homes. Up until now this particular individual had been living in a shed that was tacked on behind someone else’s house (see picture at top of this article, and the one below), and so really would benefit from having a place of his own:

61 year old Miguel sits outside his room
– a shed tacked on to the back of a house

It was great to see the community talking these things over, objectively, and coming to a compassionate resolution. And, yet again, as I did when covering Sarvodaya, I saw that the greatest need for community transition is community awakening. Blending people’s hopes, dreams and ambitions and merging them in constructive ways to align with current economic, political and environmental realities, is a dance that’s both challenging to enact and beautiful to watch. It cannot be hurried, it cannot be coerced.

Now we have the community of El Mazano starting to comprehend the implications of climate change and peak oil, and choosing to work together, to help one another, to work towards a united goal of building resilience and growing their community along healthier lines. The Eco Escuela El Manzano team are merely offering information, support and discussion facilitation. It’s up to the community to respond, and it appears beautiful green shoots of life are starting to spring forth from the seeds sown.

The new homes will be simple structures, just large enough for a single resident. They are being designed by two professional volunteer architects, who you’ll meet soon in this series, and will be built by all the able-bodied people in the community. I’m looking forward to seeing this come together, and hope you’ll follow along in this process!

As for Miguel. Well, he looked rather surprised, but very happy. On his way out the door at the close of the meeting, he took Grifen by the hand and simply said, "muchas gracias".

Stay tuned for the next edition….

A former beautiful, bustling and touristy coastal town in Chile clings to an uncertain future after being engulfed by the 2010 tsunami.

A Dichato fishing boat scene, in waning evening light, exudes a serenity that
belies the realities of the almost complete destruction behind.
All photos © copyright Craig Mackintosh

Up to 90% of the buildings of Dichato were destroyed, creating a graveyard
of rubble, peppered with dilapidated buildings – many of which may soon end
up the same way.

Yesterday I visited the little coastal town of Dichato. A few months ago, such a trip might have included a bare-footed wade along the town’s tranquil beach, and, depending on the time of day, could have included a friendly wave or greater interaction with some of the smiling local fishermen bringing in their hauls. Afterwards I might have had a nice meal at one of the sun-drenched seaside restaurants or a coffee break in one of the town’s modest cafes, frequented by sea-loving tourists from near and far. It’s the kind of place many could envision themselves retiring in, or where you might establish a small business to accommodate a more leisurely lifestyle choice. Framed by green hills and groves, lined by a long sandy beach, and embraced by a beautiful natural cove that passively calms the restless South Pacific ocean, Dichato was, simply put, a very nice place to be.

Entire blocks were wiped out

Two months on and the cleanup seems barely started

But children find a way to play anywhere

The idyllic harbour’s natural calming effect on the sea is ironic, as two months ago these natural land formations worked instead to funnel and focus a quake-powered tsunami – creating a series of mammoth waves that engulfed the town of 3,000 people in a way that defies belief. Waves reached heights of 10 metres according to mainstream media reports, while some locals we spoke to pointed at salt water tree damage at heights that had to have been up to 14 metres. Either way, these are said to have been the highest surges and waves reported from the February 2010 Chile earthquake.

Waves washed right over these two story apartments.

The harbour’s shape intensified the tsunami and increased its destructiveness.

Compared to the physical destruction, loss of life was rather light. Locals here are experienced with earthquakes, and aware of the great waves that can follow. Indeed, municipal road signs – crudely portraying people fleeing with oversized waves behind – clearly mark tsunami danger zones and encourage retreat to higher ground. As a result, only about fifty people died in this particular town, and many of those were due to their returning too soon, believing the wave series had ended, or they were new residents from foreign countries who didn’t appreciate the wisdom in the calls to flee.

PRI Chile seeks to help

We came to Dichato because Grifen, Javiera and the others from Ecoescuela El Manzano (The Apple Tree Eco School) team wished to speak to the town’s mayor about ideas on sustainable building and community design. You’ll begin to understand their motivation behind this meeting when you see the pictures to follow.

A makeshift depot outside Chile’s second largest city, the heavily damaged
Concepción, loads prefabricated emergency housing onto trucks, ready to
erect into instant villages in destruction zones like Dichato nationwide.

The people of Dichato call this new tsunami refugee camp outside of town
‘the big neighbourhood’. This one camp will have 519 ‘homes’ in it, each
measuring 3×6 metres (18 square metres, or 193 square feet). The borders
of Dichato will host four or five more such camps,
albeit much smaller, before they’re done.

As much as we might wish we were, permaculturists are just plain not ready to roll out new sustainable communities of low-energy, earth-friendly, but low-cost eco-homes on the scale needed, and in the time frames needed, to address the immediate housing needs of survivors of such disasters. We have to be realistic here, as local mayors need to be in this respect. But, we can also recognise that our inability to fill the housing voids created by disasters such as this is largely because of a deficiency of common sense in our mainstream educational systems, a moderate supply of which could in turn bring a corresponding deluge of investment in appropriate preparedness via knowledgeable people throughout society. While we may not be geared up to take on the present challenge of housing thousands of people right now, we could be tomorrow if we are today showcasing the potential of appropriate housing to the right people and engendering their support and promotion of the same.

This is exactly what Grifen, Javiera and Co., with the backing of PRIs worldwide, are seeking to do.

Grifen and others talk to the mayor of Dichato

As it stands, the people moving from their temporary tents and hastily improvised shacks in other parts of the town (see pics at bottom) into one of these ‘beauties’ are being told that they should expect to put up with them for "no longer than one or two years". But, they have not been told what should happen after that…. In these tiny, uninsulated hutches, with winter arriving and a hot summer after that, one or two years will seem like an eternity – and yet, I think these dates are highly optimistic. Chile, like more and more countries today, is already dealing with acute energy problems. With an increasing likelihood that energy shortages and their associated economic woes will deepen global crises, I can easily predict these poor people remaining in these camps indefinitely – unless they can find a way to take control of their own futures.

There’s more to the article after the following short tour of ‘the big neighbourhood’:

The Chilean military coordinates the relief effort…

… and the resulting construction looks incredibly like an army compound.

Urban planning, army style. The emergency housing are all facing
the wrong way – away from the sun.

The new residents are moving in.

The 3×6 metre room – ready to move into.
[This and the next two photos are taken with an ultra wide angle lens,
so they look much bigger than they really are.]

They’ve brought their appliances, but we’re not sure when or if they’ll receive
power to run them. Water will be dispensed from centralised collection points,
delivered by truck to the new township.

I observed the buildings having many holes in the already thin cladding,
particularly where there were knots in the wood. These people
are in for a particularly unpleasant winter.

Someone scored the big chemical toilet contract….

The mother of this child described how after the tsunami many of her friends
returned to find at least something of their house and belongings left,
but she couldn’t find even a trace.

Families live roadside, awaiting their invitation into ‘the big neighbourhood’.

Demonstrating alternatives

It is politically correct for authorities to promise only a brief stay to new camp occupants, although unrealistic expectations and false hopes can entrench a feeling of waiting, and a feeling of dependency, in these makeshift communities. Such ingrained thought can ultimately lead to bitterness and unrest. Most of these people have little in the way of money – they cannot just buy their way into a better situation.

Even in these strait circumstances, however, there are ways the people can improve their lot, and right now. To showcase this, two weeks ago Grifen, Javiera and team ‘Expostsismo’ (a play on the words ‘Expo’, and post-earthquake – ‘postsismo’) ran a highly successful emergency housing exposition in the city of Yumbel, where they took one of these generic emergency houses, donated by the local municipality, and modified it in different ways over the course of a weekend. This demonstration was observed by hundreds of people and was so well received that it resulted in several other towns from different parts of Chile hearing about it, and requesting the same demonstration to be shown to their citizens and officials.

These invitations are not surprising as team Expostsismo – around forty volunteers in total – had wowed people with some simple but effective options. One was to turn the walls inside out, so the ‘pretty’ side was on the inside, and the ’support beams’ (hard to call them support beams when they’re only 2×2"…) were on the outside, where they easily added some simple shelving before being filled with earthen mortar (straw, clay, a little sand and water) for significantly increased insulation. Other alternatives were to do the aforementioned, then separate the inner wall from the earth wall and utilise it as a ceiling panel, which can also be insulated above. (The generic emergency house has no ceiling panel and nothing but builder’s paper for insulation.) Other options shown were to re-shape one corner, utilising the material to construct a dry (composting) toilet. Officials and citizens were also taught about water harvesting potential, biological greywater cleaning systems, worm farms and their combined potential for both improved sanitation and rapid garden development.

Such simple techniques require almost nothing by way of investment – rather, it’s simply an educational process to show people healthier, low carbon alternatives that can improve their situation right now and which promise meaningful, skill-building activities that can help people to begin to take charge of their own lives and well-being.

The effect of the Expo was to inspire people with hope – they turned disaster into opportunity, hopelessness into enthusiasm. I wasn’t there, but from the volunteers I spoke to the spirit-lifting atmosphere emitted from observers was palpable.

Expo to run at Dichato

The mayor of Dichato would now like to see such an expo run in what’s left of his town. This has been roughly scheduled for May. The Expostsismo team have nothing less than a captive audience to showcase all kinds of permaculture goodness.

This is the kind of work permaculturists have a profound privelege to be involved in. The results can reach well beyond these disaster refugee camps, as such knowledge and the benefits thereof, once implemented, will ripple out to the wider community, and reach not only into subsequent disaster relief but into the very heart of mainstream thinking. This is particularly appropriate, even critical, as, in one way or another, increasing disaster frequency and intensity are likely expectations for all of us in the months and years ahead.

Continue on to read Part III: Who Gets the New House?

Please consider contributing to this worthy cause – you can do so via donation links on this page!

Additional images to follow:

The lopsided sign hanging outside a damaged and barricaded shop reads:
"Let’s go Dichato – Let’s get up! It’s time community!"

Chilean flags wave over an impromptu shack village erected post-tsunami

Even the livestock are roughing it

This large fishing boat was washed a kilometre inland from the coast. It has
since been hoisted up onto supports to protect the hull.

Most of the industries, including fishing, have collapsed. But, people start
to build again, start to live again, and we try to provide them with skills and
knowledge to increase their resiliency and optimism.

Dichato has seen better days, but now it’s up to the people to rebuild,
cooperatively and with intelligence.

What’s left of a small house in the El Manzano village, Bio Bio region, Chile
All photos © copyright Craig Mackintosh

Señora Nadia makes the best of the situation

I awoke suddenly this morning at 6:03am. Despite being jet-lagged, my deep sleep quickly gave way to alarm as I felt the bed sway violently and heard the walls creak. I groped around in the darkness for some clothes, whilst wondering, drowsily, in the style that’s typical of my weird sense of humour, how many people die whilst delaying their exit in this way – just so they can look half-decent as they watch their world collapse around them?

The 5.9 magnitude quake, centred only 58 kms to the south-west and 35 kms deep, was the largest aftershock people have experienced here at El Manzano since the big February shocker. But, thankfully, it started to subside before I even made it to the front door. I met Javiera Carrión, the hostess of the house, just as the swaying stopped. After reassurance from her that it was safe to do so, I made my way back to the comfort of my pillow, and then lay there, imagining what the much larger quake of less than two months ago would have felt like. I remembered Grifen’s description of the 3am chaos – the house shaken so hard that the floor ended up being covered in everything that belonged on the walls and shelves and in the fridge, etc.

A partially destroyed house in El Manzano – all the main structural beams
shifted and broke away from their below-ground segments

The February 27 quake had a significant impact on the El Manzano community, but, strangely enough, that impact has mostly been positive.

Let me explain.

Over the last two years, in the lead-up to the February earthquake, Grifen Hope, his wife Javiera Carrión, his brother-in-law Jorge Carrión and his wife Carolina Heidke, along with other family members and volunteers, had been working with the local community, trying to develop ‘a culture of meeting’ – a culture of discussion, planning, collaboration and support. The community here is made up of poor families and individuals – many making just a subsistence living from seasonal agricultural work – yet, despite the poverty, the western cultural disease of ‘every man for himself’ is still strong here, and, with an uncertain future ahead, Grifen and family knew this needed to be addressed if the community were to survive.

Following the Transition Town planning process, that seeks to raise community awareness and subsequently facilitate discussion on issues such as peak oil and climate change, and how these will effect food supplies and other necessities, the family sought to inspire the community with what they could achieve, if they only wanted to. Although generally appreciating the concern, many of Grifen and Javiera’s ideas were shrugged off. Community members just didn’t feel the need to listen. With their low-carbon existence and their tiny ecological footprint, it didn’t seem that these warnings should apply to them. They weren’t causing the problems, so why should they need to do anything?

But, then came the quake….

Grifen Hope stands by what’s left of the Carrión family’s irrigation channel,
destroyed just days before a new power-generating turbine was to be installed

Although only a few buildings in the small community were damaged or destroyed, other aspects hit them. People couldn’t buy food – the closest markets were quickly looted and empty and fuel was rationed. The entire country was without power for several days, and the El Manzano community for ten. Since all the water here arrives to taps via small electric pumps, no power also translated to no water. The well-intentioned but somewhat annoying family now became a lifeline – as people lined up to use their well’s hand pump, one of the items the family had encouraged community members to obtain over the last two years.

The post-quake meeting saw the entire village come along

Seizing the moment, Grifen, Javiera and family quickly organised a community planning meeting. Instead of a handful of attendees, now everyone from the village – all 82 of them – met at the village school to discuss the situation. The turnout was without precedent. The meeting resulted in organised bartering of food and other items to help everyone get through the difficult time. The Carrión family gave lots of food from their organic farm, while those that had smaller surpluses in specific areas shared theirs. The village families soon discovered that, between them all, they had sufficient food and water and didn’t need to look elsewhere. They were thus able to avoid the chaos and dangers reported from larger centres nearby, where looting was rife.

As well as creating problems with physical needs, the earth’s violent upheaval left many in the village with clear signs of trauma. Slight aftershocks would send women and children into shrieks of fear. The community action and cooperation really helped here also, as people came to realise they were not alone and that people in the community cared for them. The realisation they were part of a larger cohesive whole noticeably helped the mental healing process.

Ultimately, the earthquake resulted in the village placing greater value on the invisible structures within their immediate community, and the necessity, and opportunity, of strengthening them and building additional resilience into their lives. Where people had until now been keen to find a way out of this small village, the natural disaster has, it seems, shifted their priorities and made them look towards each other, and their own respective ability to contribute, to create a better life for themselves – right here, right now. Like I was this morning, but in a more meaningful way, this community may well have been shaken awake.

Postscript/Video: Meet Doris. Prior to the quake, before the little El Manzano community decided it was pertinent to seriously consider things they could do to build resiliency into their village, Doris was already paying attention. She took the advice of the Eco Escuela El Manzano team and got herself a hand pump, so if the lights went out, it didn’t have to mean she and her family would be without water as well. Hence her describing the fact that the community had TWO hand pumps to supply water after the quake hit.

Now the whole village wants to get a hand pump. Imagine that.

Continue on to read Part II: Visiting Dichato – the Town That Was

Please consider contributing to this worthy cause – you can do so via donation links on this page!

Grifen stands on a pile of adobe bricks retrieved from destroyed buildings
in the neighbouring town of Cabrero – which he’ll use in constructing new
houses. What can’t be used will simply be broken down and composted

Living in Canada makes staying warm in winter an interesting challenge. In such a cold climate I have long wondered how to continue to keep humans warm (care of people) without bringing down forests or using fossil fuels (care of earth). Even the most energy efficient home with passive solar design will require some sort of external heat input during our winter.

Biomass is simply “ordered” carbon through the process of photosynthesis – ie. stored solar energy. Biomass comes in the form of straw, wood, stover, or generally any matter from living organisms. Wood is a premier choice for heating as it has a high carbon content and will burn hot. However, if there was a massive shift to heating with wood we would quickly deplete our forests and significanlty affect the climate. How do we heat ourselves without bringing down the lungs and life support system of the planet?

Recently we visited Nick and Kirsten of Milkwood Permaculture. I was immediately drawn to their shower block built from an old sheep dip and using rain water heated by what’s called a rocket stove.

Brilliant – this was the missing link! The heating component I have spent years contemplating. Combined with passive solar design I think that we can solve the above stated problem of heating in the cold Canadian winters. Before you get too excited and start jumping up and down screaming hot diggidy, I have two more great reasons to use rocket stoves: (i) anyone can build them and (ii) they are cheap as chips.

Rocket stoves are efficient, clean biomass burning appliances developed by Ianto Evans. The stoves are brilliant in their design as they look at biomass combustion in a totally different way than most biomass burners. The majority of wood stoves burn fuel in chambers that radiate heat away from the fire. This reduces the fires ability to properly combust the wood and creates incomplete combustion. The result is soot, creasotes, dirty smoke from the chimney and more wood is required for a given amount of heat.

So how does a rocket stove work? The rocket stove is built from refractive brick which keeps the thermal energy in the combustion chamber and thus in the combustion process. The burn chamber is designed to maintain the highest combustion temperature possible which ensures that all of the products of combustion are burned. Rocket stoves are designed to burn sticks and small woody biomass. As a handful of sticks have a higher surface area to volume ratio (more edge) than an equivalent-sized log, you get better oxygen mixing and better combustion. Essentially, the rocket stove is designed to provide the perfect ratio of oxygen to fuel to achieve what chemists call stoichiometric combustion.

After the combustion process is complete the combustion products rise up the flue. Because all of the fuel has been consumed the gases are clean and we can now remove the heat without being overly concerned about condensing nasty products such as creasotes, tar and soot. Creasotes, tar and soot are usually the result of incomplete combustion.

Best of all, the fuel source for a rocket stove can be quickly grown and re-grown and re-regrown in a coppice style woodland management. Willow, carrigana, poplar and alder are examples of wood species that would work well in our climate. And just when you thought that we had reached peak awesomness, there is more. All of those species are considered hard woods, grow fast, burn hot and alder and carrigana are nitrogen fixing. If you do not have your coppice system up and running you can also burn pine cones or forest litter – which many properties have in abundance.

What was especially interesting for me about the setup at Milkwood was how they used the rocket stove to heat water. I’ve only before heard of applications to use the flue gases to heat thermal mass (such as a cob bench) for space heating. My brain gears started turning and I realized that the next step would be to marry the two in one system.

(Art above courtesy of Milkwood Permaculture)

I’ll have to do a little analysis but my hunch is that a high efficiency passive house combined with a rocket stove combined with domestic hot water combined with a heated cob bench in a Canadian home (or any home for that matter) is going to work great and have the following benefits:

1. increased thermal comfort from the radiant heat off the cob bench
2. ability to heat sufficiently while using significantly less wood
3. high thermal efficiency when compared to conventional wood stoves
4. low fuel demand allowing home owner to be fuel self sufficient with coppice wood managment system
5. easy and low cost set up with locally available and natural materials
6. the ability to heat domestic hot water while heating the home
7. the ability to use heated water in under floor hydronic systems

Watch out Canada – coming this May the rockets are going to land and when they do the only space they will ever deal with again is space heating.

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El Manzano in Transition – Towards Community Resilience, by Design

by Grifen Hope of Ecoescuela El Manzano

1. PROJECT AIM
2. BACKGROUND
3. PROBLEM & LOCAL CONTEXT
4. OBJECTIVES & ACTIONS
5. NETWORKS
6. FINANCIAL INFORMATION

1. PROJECT AIM

The primary objective of this project is to assist devastated communities of Chile to plan and design their own resilient settlements, to quickly recover from the devastating Earthquake of February 27 2010, and to build long-term resistance to the future effects of natural disaster, economic, climate, and energy disruption.

This project presents a call for regional, national and international investment in living examples of good practice in the planning and design of resilient human settlements. Evidence of the outcomes from this approach will be used to influence regional and national government officials and policy makers to replicate the model throughout the affected regions of BìoBìo and Maule.

2. BACKGROUND

On February 27th 2010 Chile was hit by a ´Mega-earthquake´ that shook the very foundations of Chilean society. In total 4.2 million people have been affected, many of whom are still without basic public services. Approximately 1.5 million homes have been destroyed or heavily damaged, with an estimated 1 million people left homeless. Initial estimates suggest the recovery will cost US$30 billion and take 3-4 years.

On reflection it could have been much worse. While the quake was 500 times stronger than that in Haiti and devastation is enormous, Chile has fared relatively well. Compared to Haiti the death toll and damage to buildings and infrastructure has been moderate. With a long history of devastating earthquakes the Chilean government and people are well prepared to withstand, respond and recover from a large earthquake.

At this point in time the priority is still on the relief response and providing basic needs to hundreds of thousands of affected people. However, attention is now turning to planning for the reconstruction phase. I think some concise reference to the vulnarabilities of modern industrial systems to multiple likely future impacts of peak oil, climate change, etc. is warranted to explain why this local resilience approach is so important to advance, rather than using existing local national and international capacity to rebuild communities on the old pattern.

3. PROBLEM & LOCAL CONTEXT

The village of El Manzano, home to 28 families, is the first official Transition Town in Latin America and in a pre-earthquake process of redesigning itself for resilience to disaster. The village remains highly vulnerable to the systemic crises of natural disaster, economic, climate, and energy disruption. Many of the basic necessities such as water, food and medical care are dependent on external resources, and existing housing is not fit for human habitation. These poverty related issues have been compounded by the recent earthquake. As El Manzano is out of the main disaster area it is very low on the priority list for recovery. In response the community has identified its own vulnerabilities;

1. Dependence on electricity for water for drinking, irrigation of crops and animals.
2. Lack of access to land for subsistence crops, low fertility and low moisture holding capacity of existing soils, with dependence on unhealthy external food sources.
3. Earthquake damage to two houses making them uninhabitable, and a general state of substandard housing for the majority of village residents.
4. Reliance on septic tanks for household and human waste disposal, subsequent excessive use of water and contamination of shallow groundwater used for drinking.
5. Low participation in community activities and the design of a community plan for the development of local resilience.

4. OBJECTIVES & ACTIONS

The community of El Manzano has identified the following priorities for disaster response and recovery in coming months. These activities will provide practical training opportunities for local residents and permaculture trainees in construction of simple systems, and in regenerative design that can be replicated in other communities.

1. To ensure water supply for 28 families independent of the electricity grid for drinking and irrigation.
   (a). Implement appropriate solutions for the supply of gravity fed household drinking water and irrigation systems to generate resilience in drought times or black out.
   (b). Manufacture of PVC hand pumps for extraction of clean shallow groundwater.
   (c). Recovery of existing deep wells which can extract water without electricity.
2. To ensure local food security for 71 people by increasing natural fertility and water holding capacity of soil using locally available materials and recycling of organic wastes.
   (a). Establish 1.2 hectares of community garden to meet the vitamin and calorie needs of 71 residents.
   (b). Cultivate 1.9 hectares of community compost and grain crops for the food self-reliance of 71 people.
   (c). Implement a local food cooperative so residents can purchase bulk food in the village.
   (d). Development of soil improvement techniques and organic soil amendments.
3. To rebuild two houses made uninhabitable in the earthquake (affecting 2 families: 3 children, 3 women, 4 men) as a model for other residents to improve substandard housing conditions.
   (a). Rebuild the 40 m2 house of Don Oscar and family using locally available natural materials to be earthquake resistant.
4. To ensure appropriate sanitation for 28 families, reduce need for water and reduce groundwater contamination.
   (a). Reduce water consumption and contamination of ground water with construction of dry composting toilets.
   (b). Implementation of simple bio-filters for the safe re-use of grey water in gardens.
5. To support the community design process in EL Manzano and develop a Community Resilience Action Plan.
   (a). Provide a model of community-led planning and design for community that can be replicated widely in the affected regions of BíoBío and Maule, and around the world.
   (b). Disseminate the results widely to local and regional authorities to attract attention and replication in other affected communities of BíoBío and Maule.

5. NETWORKS

Ecoescuela El Manzano (EEM) is uniquely positioned to make a big difference in the reconstruction process. EEM has developed strong relationships with the El Manzano Neighbourhood Association and Youth Group, and assisted a core team to begin the Transition planning processes here. Relationships have been formed with the mayor and local council of Cabrero and their PRODESAL programme supporting rural women in small enterprise. A partnership has been formed with the regional demonstration centre Centre of Education and Technology (CET) Yumbel to share resources and expertise. EEM is working with the foundation Work for a Brother to duplicate the El Manzano project in some of the worst disaster affected communities on the coast of BíoBío. An existing contract with the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) through the Environmental Protection Fund exists to install appropriate technology during 2009 in a community demonstration centre, and in 2010 in all houses in the village. In 2009 El Manzano was recognised as an example of best practice in community development by national organisation Territorio Chile. At a national level Ecoescuela has been instrumental in forming the Instituto Chileno de Permacultura and training a network of 140 permaculture designers and teachers. At an international level Ecoescuela is a regional training centre for sustainability in partnership with the Permaculture Research Institute, Holmgren Design Services, Gaia University and the Transition Towns Network.

6. FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Ecoescuela El Manzano has committed to raise US$50,000 to augment an existing US$17,500 for this ambitious and important project in 2010.

A donation from you will help turn disaster into opportunity. Through redesign of damaged settlements we can alleviate emergency need, and invest in long term resilience.

Gracias from Chile!

advance to the worldwide permaculture community for getting behind this work. You never know – in the future you may be the recipient of such assistance.

Donate via PRI USA (USA residents)* Other non-paypal methods of donating here
Donate via PRI Australia (rest of world)* Other non-paypal methods of donating here
*Please be sure to click on the ‘Add special instructions to seller’ link, and then type ‘CHILE’ in the field provided, to ensure these fund are correctly diverted.