Brick building with roof covered with ceramic tiles | Photo by Waldemar Jan via Flickr/OpenVerse CC01.0
Part XXIV of the “EDEN America” Series
Given this week’s tragic devastation of some towns in Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, and other neighboring states due to powerful tornadoes, we will postpone the discussion of the “Renaissance Awards.”
If readers may recall, this columnist mentioned in Part VIII of this series a new high-performance cement that more than doubles the 40-year life span of “Portland Cement.” I said that fact that I learned in covering the “World of Concrete Trade Show” in the Las Vegas (NV) Convention Center in January 2015. Readers may revisit the article Life Now Begins at 80 at this link:
What the proposed new “Age of Renaissance” — starting in the 33 states that provide water to the Mississippi River — may do is persuade the local-and-federal governments to help rebuild (in a better way) homes in tornado-prone towns and cities. And make the new dwellings and buildings virtually tornado-proof. (Or in states like Florida, likely hurricane-proof.) It means using modern cement, ceramics, and reinforcing bars (rebars) for the foundation, wall, floors, and roof of the new houses constructed. Or reconstructed. In every home or factory building or facility built or rebuilt, we may also add bunker-like basements as a mandatory feature of the new edifices.
“Yes, modern and more robust materials could replace (components of) houses and buildings made of light (or inferior) parts. And make them survive the strongest of tropical typhoons that often result in thousands of deaths and injuries in the Philippines.”
I recall being escorted by my Italian hosts to visit a poultry house in a suburban part of Milan in 1982. They made the Italian poultry house of bricks and its roof of cement with ceramic tiles lining its top. They designed them to withstand the coldest winters and snowstorms in Northern Italy. Our then-ceramic project in Sorsogon Province (Philippines) included plans of producing bricks and other ceramic housing products. Yes, modern and more robust materials could replace (components of) houses and buildings made of light (or inferior) parts. And make them survive the strongest of tropical typhoons that often result in thousands of deaths and injuries in the Philippines.
In the early 1980s, I wrote a case study about developing a modern ceramic industry in the Philippines. I mentioned The Three Little Pigs fable as the symbolic argument for why the Filipino people must start building permanent houses made of solid materials. Like bricks and roof tiles, use a foundation of rocks and cement in elevated areas far from residential districts below sea level. I titled my work A Psycho-Ceramic Medicine for the Economic Ailments of the Philippines. Curious readers may read this columnist’s September 2009 article that reprinted a summary of the said 1980s study at this link.
I even quoted a parable from the Bible to reinforce my argument of building houses of more robust materials and on a solid foundation. Here is what I included in my 2009 reprint: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; (25) and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. (26) And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; (27) and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it. – Matthew 7:24-27.
I now rest my case for the Court of Public Opinion to decide.
