Thousands of people in Puerto Rico are still living under blue tarps three years after Hurricane Maria struck the island, and over 30,000 families have asked the government for assistance after the storm destroyed or damaged their homes, with not everyone eligible to receive help. This is why Paula Paoli and Owen Ingley are in Las Marías, Puerto Rico, and hope to introduce a new construction technique that helps homeowners avoid the destruction of houses in the future. The couple wants to expand the use of biodegradable domes to help people who have lost their homes replace them with structures that have the resiliency to withstand weather events that devastate Puerto Rico with increasing frequency. These “SuperAdobe” structures proposed by Paoli and Ingley use sandbags, barbed wire and on-site earth as its essential components, and the bags are piled up on top of another, plastered and painted.
By Coral Murphy. USA TODAY. December 2, 2020.
