During my apprenticeship at Cal-Earth, I built two emergency shelters and my fellow workshop participants and apprentices. Cal-Earth’s Emergency shelters are 6-foot lancet domes constructed in less than 12 hours out of short sandbags and barbed wire. We built our first dome in early September 2012 and the second dome in November 2012. Those domes can provide earthquake and flood-resistant shelters. Materials of war, barbed wire, and sandbags can provide easy to build and safe shelters for victims of natural and man-made disasters.
These domes are considered temporary shelter because the bags are filled with unstabilized earth (i.e not mixed with cement or lime) thus once the bags photo-degrade, the dome will have very little protection against erosion. Below are some photos of the two domes which we worked on.
