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Koji Sasahara / AP
One-year-old girl Rin Yokota, right, is accompanied by her grandmother Tomoko Igari, 63, as they walk in the compound of their temporary housing in Otama village, Fukushima Prefecture, northern Japan on Thursday.
ICHINOSEKI, Japan – We’re on the Iwate coast of Japan this week, looking back on the devastation wrought here nearly a year ago by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that flattened coastal communities and killed nearly 20,000 people.
The cleanup we have witnessed on our frequent trips back here since the disaster is simply astounding and is a testament to the strength of the communities that remain. In fishing towns like Otsuchi, Kesennuma and Ichinomaki, NBC News has documented the gradual steps to recovery, from search and rescue, to the clearing of rubble, to the sorting and removal of debris from city streets.
One thing absent in our coverage though: reconstruction.
My colleague Ian Williams earlier in the week wrote about the issues facing the town of Otsuchi, where 10 percent of the town’s population of 16,000 is dead or missing and nearly 70 percent of the town was obliterated by the tsunami.
Today, all that stands in much of Otsuchi are the foundations of the buildings that once stood there – skeletal remains of sleepy neighborhoods that once occupied these parts. In the surrounding hills around, small communities of short-term, pre-fabricated homes for the displaced have sprung up, granting a small degree of normalcy to residents who had spent months living in schools, recreation centers and other temporary camps.
When the government will allow, much less begin, construction of new permanent homes in these areas is difficult to predict. In communities like Otsuchi, the debate seems to be centered on whether residents should be allowed to begin rebuilding now or must the town’s coastal defenses be strengthened before development can begin.
With many of these coastal towns having disproportionally older populations – a result of the departure of many younger residents to other parts of Japan for work – the desire for quickly built, affordable housing is a popular sentiment among people here.
It was with that backdrop that I watched a video yesterday released in early January of a 30-story hotel tower being built in China in a shockingly quick 360 hours.
Could a 30-story hotel be built in 15 days? The Chinese construction firm Broad Sustainable Building released video to show how they did it.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen such feats from China, or from Chinese construction firm, Broad Sustainable Building (BSB). Two years ago, the three-year-old company shocked the world by constructing a 15-floor hotel in two days.
This time around they doubled down on the aptly named T-30 Hotel.
Not only that, but they gave viewers a unique look at a style of building construction that has been employed by the West for some time, but with unique adaptions that BSB developed and hope will help launch the style throughout Asia.
Pre-fab solution?
BSB’s system of pre-fabrication involves constructing segments of a building in advance at an indoor factory. There the basic building blocks of a modern building – things like ventilation, water pipes and electrical wiring – are pre-installed, allowing for the segments to be uniformly stacked at the construction site and assembled like Lego blocks.
The savings in construction time is perhaps the most note-worthy thing. An interesting piece done on BSB and its latest feat by the Los Angeles Times quotes one expert on pre-fabricated architecture who noted that such construction techniques can shave a third or a half off building schedules in western countries.
BSB sliced off between one-half and two-thirds of construction time on T-30. Not to mention 20 to 30 percent off building costs through reduced construction times and greater efficiencies.
And since much of the construction is done in the relative safety of the factory floor compared to many stories in the air, BSB’s on-site accidents noticeably dipped.
Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images
Elderly Japanese, whose homes were destroyed in last year's tsunami and now living in temporary housing, mingle at a community center in a temporary housing site on March 5, 2012 in Minamisanriku, Japan.
The company also claims a number of innovations in its designs that would certainly appeal to rebuilding residents in northeastern Japan. After all, the inspiration for BSB’s formation were reconstruction efforts in China’s Sichuan province after an 8.0 earthquake rocked the region in 2008, leveling cities and leaving towns in such disrepair, they were forced to completely relocate.
According to the video, which was released by BSB, the new hotel is designed to handle earthquakes up to 9.0 on the Richter scale and incorporates design advances like external solar shading, three-stage air purification systems and improved insulation techniques that make the building five times more energy efficient than other Chinese buildings.
Pre-fabricated building techniques are already in use throughout the affected regions of Japan as a form of temporary housing. In fact, Japan was already moving residents into pre-fabricated houses just eight days after the quake and as of last week there were 52,620 temporary houses built in 911 locations throughout the country.
However, much of this housing is built on school sports fields and other public spaces – often contracted out for two years before the temporary housing must be disassembled and the space returned.
That’s a point not lost on the residents we talked to this week. Many living in short-term housing are older and have no meaningful income. So they live off pensions with no realistic means of building or renting new homes.
To deal with this issue that will seemingly boil over in 2014, Iwate prefecture alone has announced they will construct between 4,000-5,000 permanent public housing units for the displaced.
Where and when these housing blocks will be built in this nation where land is at a premium is one that will certainly keep urban planners here busy for years to come.
The lessons learned from the T-30 exercise should not be lost on municipal governments up and down the Iwate coast. Pre-fabricated housing once viewed as a short-term fix can now be the answer to a very long-term problem.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- Fukushima plant, before, during and one year after
- Japanese tourism slowly rebounds year after tsunami
- Slimy, salty, but tasty: Seaweed revives Japan village
- Tsunami scientists prepare for next wave
- Tsunami survivors: Obstacles remain for rice farmer
- Giant quake like Japan's could hit Pacific Northwest
- Earthquake experts improve their predictive powers
- Cook uses recipes to help quake survivors heal
- One year after Fukushima, Japanese town is frozen in time
- Japanese tsunami survivor, 79, looks ahead
- Tsunami Survivors: Struggling to live on, alone
- Japan Red Cross: Whole year wasted after tsunami
- Cosmic Log: Hear the soundtrack of a super-quake
- Nuke pill frenzy fizzles in U.S. as Fukushima fades
- Photo Blog: Panoramic images, then and now
- Japan disaster snarls U.S. nuke plant plans
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Chinese government's effort in the reconstruction of Sichuan region after the massive earthquake in 2008 massive earthquake was unmatched anywhere in the world. The 8.0 scale earthquake resulted in the death of around 90,000 people and injuring nearly 363,000, destroying more than 15 million homes, leaving 10 million homeless and 1.5 million displaced and causing more than $20 billion in damage.over 90,000 people were killed and village after village were levelled and destroyed.
Six months after the earthquake, all debris were removed and reconstruction began. In order to mobilize the whole nation's efforts to speed up the restoration and reconstruction in earthquake-hit areas and to provide assistance and support in an orderly manner, a mechanism for aid partnership was set up within China in June 2008. The program follows the principle of "each province helps one seriously-affected county," and sets the term of aid partnership at three years. A total of 19 provinces and municipalities in eastern and central China have paired up with quake-hit areas. Taking into account the economic strength of aid providers and the situation of aid receivers.
Aid includes:
1. Planning, architectural design, expert counseling, engineering construction and supervision;
2. Construction and restoration of urban and rural resident houses;
3. Construction and restoration of public facilities, including schools, hospitals, television broadcasting stations, cultural and sports facilities, social welfare facilities, etc;
4. Construction and restoration of infrastructure, including urban and rural roads, water supply and drainage, gas supply, disposal of sewage and garbage, etc;
5. Construction and restoration of agricultural and rural infrastructure;
6. Providing mechanical equipment, instruments and tools, construction materials, and services such as selecting teachers and medical personnel, talent training, non-local nursery and school enrollment, labor export and import, agricultural technology, etc;
7. On a market-oriented basis, encouraging companies to invest in building local plants, setting up trade and circulation service facilities, and partic
Three years after the earthquake the reconstruction efforts had been completed, with new houses, schools, hospitals, community centres, commercial infrastructure and industrial estates were constructed at new locations. The entire reconstruction, costing about US$123.13 billion.
http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2011/05/11/lessons-from-china%E2%80%99s-wenchuan-earthquake/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/15/chinaearthquake.china
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_149790.pdf
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/special/2011-05/10/c_13864797.htm
Henrich von Dorf ... Great informitive post ... thanks !
Hopefully they rebuild the schools with materials and construction practices that are up to international standards this time.
10 million homeless + 1.5 million displaced + around 90,000 people dead + 363,000 injured = 11,953,000 people.
Then, more than 15 million homes were destroyed.
Very strange, this numbers mean that there were more than one home per inhabitant, almost iimpossible since homes in China average 3 people in the cities and even more in rural areas. Either around 4 million homes were destroyed or the sum of homeless, displaced, dead and injured should be around 45 million people.
romilio:
Never heard of numbers with Chinese characteristics ? If you add up the GDP from each province and regions in China, you get more than that of the world.
WOW!!
Hope they didn't miss a few nuts and bolts along the way.
But why so high? Won't it be safer to stay closer to the ground after such disaster?
wow if only we could do that in America, oops we cant first off the goverment has to force the land owner into a reduced price for his land, then waiting for a permit (overly priced), then getting bids, then getting a over priced union contractor, the price continues to swell, then after the sheeple get moved in the law suits begin, the hall way is not wide enough then they want to know if the materials used in the building of the structure are safe evening news has reported tainted wall board from china its a never ending battle so tell your grand parents you sold the family farm, on and on and on the phrase only in America, yes sheeple your big brother keeps the American dream unaffordable (think freddie and frannie), the united state of the U.N. is knocking on your door!!!
We could do that. We did do it. Nobody wanted the utilitarian "starkness", and its unflattering social status.
Yeah, America sucks,
The the Chinese government does not f-ck around, if they want it they take it.
If they want the whole farm they just take the whole farm and give the people a tiny efficiency apartment.
Then they tell the people that they will provide them with some kind of low paying menial work with low pay that they don't even know how to do.
In China they don't f-ck around with over priced union contractors or even know what a union is. Hell they don't even use concrete pumping machines.
They don't f-uck around, they just get a bazillion peasant women and give them buckets.
In China they don't f-ck around, they keep costs down at any cost. It's do or die, they drive a hard bargain they pay as little as possible and the peasants have nothing except just barely enough to eat so they can keep working, but that's ok, it keeps the shelves at Wall Mart stocked for you and I.
Now we got no jobs and not much money but that's ok, as long as Wal Mart makes it so we can live better than the Chinese.
Maybe if China had lots of red tape with their building codes like we do in America everything would not have fallen to the ground when there was an earthquake. Maybe if China was not building like crazy concrete prices in America would not be so high.
May not be America. But when Earth quake striked at former Yugoslavakia decades ago, pre-fab home made by ATCO was shipped over there pronto, and villages rose overnight.
Underemployed Teacher, your are clearly misinformed. Although many US media sources try to paint the picture that the Chinese government steals land from poor folks everywhere, instances of such stories are fairly rare and not representative of the practice in reality. Old and dilapidated buildings are rebuilt with improvements, and the original residents can either move back in or take a payment. In fact, a lot of Chinese people look forward to this transition for new and better equipped housing. Of course there will be rare instances of abuse, but they are not the whole picture and it'd be ignorant to believe otherwise.
Also, there are unions in China. In fact, the ACFTU is the largest union in China and in the world. In fact, Chinese labor laws even provide protection for the presence of unions in Chinese and foreign companies operating in China. Labor unions do not have the notoriety in China as they do in the US simply because they function differently, much like the government of the two countries.
Before pointing fingers at another country, please keep in mind that our US companies are the ones importing whatever products and services you are unhappy with, and it is our US companies that approve the standards of quality before bringing these products and services into our homes. We should worry more about our problems at home before shifting the blame on anyone else.
China's growth reminds me of what Americans did during the WWII war effort. Instead of producing tanks and planes every 6 minutes, they do everything else to catch up to a modern standard of living.
China just seems to have a hard working culture and their hard work is showing results. Unlike in America now where budgets and leaner methods are replacing the need for a large work force.
It wouldn't surprise me that in the upcoming future, when exports become obsolete to globalization that our boss at work will be Chinese. While in China they'll have American bosses.
So you have never worked with Chinese ?
This video leaves me with question after question. I work in construction and yes im in the oh so hated union and have worked on countless high rise buildings over the years in both california and las vegas. In vegas all of the exterior walls for the mega resorts that popped up in the 90's were all built off the site in yards set up by contractors who supposedly were signatory union contractors. Well the employees making those exterior walls werent chinese but they were imported mexicans transported right in here illegally by these so called union contractors. They were paid about as much as a chinese imigrant and since the work was done off site the union was either bribed or unable to do a thing about it. Well that left quite a few legit americans sitting right on the couch jobless. I worked in las vegas pretty much the entire 90's and watched it decay at tsunami speeds and the decay was covered by opening of mega resort after mega resort. In 1993 when i relocated there you couldnt find a mexican in nevada and when i left in 2003 I could no longer read the bill boards driving away cause they were all in spanish. anyway im off topic but on the interior end of these mega hotels the floors and walls were all typical mostly 3 wing towers 100 rooms a floor and believe me they were being done as fast as the contractor wanted them, every trade from electric to drywall to plumbing to hvac was on a 1 week a floor turn around and by the first 3 floors youre so used to it that they coulda been turn a floor every 3 days but you werent allowed to speed up and i dont know why. "oh wait maybe i do" Duhh we need to save the damn jobs! We can out do every country in the world and have trained every country in the world on how to build our way. We dont do it in 360 hours cause wed rather keep america working 360 days. Another thing i saw going in vegas that burned me up was all the interior work started being handed to the mexicans and this time the trick was pay him half union scale and split the other half among the supervisors running the show. The union did act on that once they were told. The mexicans were imported here however illegally, also managed to join the union with no documentation and were all hired at journeyman level the day they stepped outta the back of the semi they were shipped in. And the i-9 / employee verification was already in affect, hows that work? Anyway half of the right scale was 15 times what theyd make in mexico and they were told to shut up or pack up and eventually one shot his mouth and down went the building boom of the 90;s and my job. The mexicans stayed and as usual each has a family of ten and a baby in the oven and las vegas is the worse hit recession area in the usa. The casinoes take u for every dime and make ton of money annually and couldnt care less though. They keep importing immigrants and the job keep disappearing and everyones just blind to what the future holds for a actual american if dont dont pull our heads outta our asses and restructure this entire country starting right from the white house down and soon. Whats with showing us all this china and foreign country out doing us crap anyway? Now what they wanna ship in some chinese to take some more jobs? The problem in the usa is hidden up in those fancy mansions you glimpse at as you go by on your way to work at mcdonalds everyday up in all those hills. Its the 20 percent of rich population hidden up there on those hills living very good that our running this show and they dont see the damage they cause below cause they never leave the ritz areas of america. The problem we have right now is mexico and its point blank youd be blind as a bat to say it isnt. The over crowded roads the joblessness and national debt can all be traced to immigration and we gotta end it period! UNIONS HAVE VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH THE MESS! But theyre involved and making money i assure you. Why is it that the chinese can throw up a thirty story hotel in 360 hours but cant get a hybrid vehicle on the road for less then 50,000 bucks is what i wanna know?
Marshal does make a roundabout point and to help him make that point; I'm going to tear down that wall of text in order to make it easier for people to read:
Marshall-2231374
This video leaves me with question after question. I work in construction and yes, I’m in the oh so hated union and have worked on countless high rise buildings over the years in both California and Las Vegas.
In Vegas, all of the exterior walls for the mega resorts that popped up in the 90's were all built off the site in yards set up by contractors who supposedly were signatory union contractors. Well, the employees making those exterior walls weren’t Chinese but they were imported Mexicans transported right in here illegally by these so called union contractors. They were paid about as much as a Chinese immigrant and since the work was done off site; the union was either bribed or unable to do a thing about it. Well that left quite a few legit Americans sitting right on the couch jobless.
I worked in Las Vegas pretty much the entire 90's and watched it decay at tsunami speeds and the decay was covered by the opening of one mega resort after mega resort. In 1993, when I relocated there you couldn’t find a Mexican in Nevada and when i left in 2003 I could no longer read the bill boards driving away because they were all in Spanish.
On the interior end of these mega hotels the floors and walls were all typical, mostly 3 wing towers, 100 rooms a floor and believe me; they were being done as fast as the contractor wanted them. Every trade from electric to drywall to plumbing to h-vac was on a 1 week a floor turn around and by the first 3 floors you’re so used to it that they coulda been turn a floor every 3 days but you weren’t allowed to speed up and I don’t know why. "Oh wait maybe i do" Duhh we need to save the damn jobs! We can out do every country in the world and have trained every country in the world on how to build our way. We don’t do it in 360 hours cause we’d rather keep America working 360 days.
Another thing I saw going in Vegas that burned me up was all the interior work started being handed to the Mexicans and this time the trick was pay him half union scale and split the other half among the supervisors running the show. The union did act on that once they were told. The Mexicans were imported here illegally, managed to join the union with no documentation and were all hired at journeyman level the day they stepped outta the back of the semi they were shipped in. And the i-9 / employee verification was already in affect, how does that work? Anyway half of the right scale was 15 times what they’d make in Mexico and they were told to shut up or pack up. Eventually one shot his mouth and down went the building boom of the 90;s and my job.
The Mexicans stayed and as usual each has a family of ten and a baby in the oven and Las Vegas is the worse hit recession area in the USA. The casino’s take u for every dime and make ton of money annually and couldn’t care less though. They keep importing immigrants and the job keep disappearing and everyone’s just blind to what the future holds for a actual American if you don’t pull our heads outta our asses and restructure this entire country starting right from the white house down and soon. What’s with showing us all this china and foreign country out doing us crap anyway? Now what they wanna ship in some Chinese to take some more jobs? The problem in the USA is hidden up in those fancy mansions you glimpse at as you go by on your way to work at McDonalds everyday up in all those hills. Its the 20 percent of rich population hidden up there on those hills living very good that our running this show and they don’t see the damage they cause below cause they never leave the ritz areas of America. The problem we have right now is Mexico and its point blank you’d be blind as a bat to say it isn’t.
The over crowded roads, the joblessness and national debt can all be traced to immigration and we gotta end it period! UNIONS HAVE VERY LITTLE TO DO WITH THE MESS! But they’re involved and making money i assure you. Why is it that the Chinese can throw up a thirty story hotel in 360 hours but can’t get a hybrid vehicle on the road for less then 50,000 bucks is what i wanna know.
Last year, there are news about part of the roof got blown off from one of their international airport becaus of the wind...
That must be a CIA plot.