On October 15 when the 7.2 earthquake hit the island of Bohol IDEA’s classrooms in Loon and Sagbayan took a beating. Walls and ceilings cracked, columns that held the walls cracked and made each of these rooms unsafe to occupy. Since that time our students have been meeting in tent classrooms.
Up until now our focus has been on getting our IDEA deaf children and their families back into homes and we are just about finished with that. Now we move to assisting homeless victims outside of IDEA’s deaf family. Visit our Bohol Corehouse Map to see before and after photos.
At the end of March the children will be heading home for summer break so now is the time for our crews to put their full focus on getting the classrooms and dorms back in order.
Our all deaf men construction teams are getting to practice their skills as they redo each of these classrooms. It is a real pleasure to watch these guys in action. These guys work so well together while carrying out the system of jacketing broken columns with steel, adding 45 degree steel braces to the trusses, covering broken hollow-block walls with mess, spraying them with cement plaster, and finally painting everything. And the results are beautiful buildings that are actually earthquake resistant and can pass inspection by any government engineer.
The amazing silver lining in this disaster is that we have been able to hire 45 deaf men for our construction teams and keep them working and our schools and dorms will look better then ever when repairs are completed. God really can work all things together for good.
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- Classroom Building Loon
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- Earthquake Damaged Walls
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- Broken Columns
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- Steel Jacketed Columns and B
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- Cement Stucco Batch Mixing
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- Loading “Shotcrete” Machine
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- Spraying On Stucco
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- Covering Meshed Walls with Stucco
