Temporary Housing for Colombia's Earthquake Displaced: The Case for Container Unit Rows

On 10 August 2026 a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia, in the department of Chocó, killing at least 335 people and injuring more than 4,600, with search and rescue operations continuing and authorities still assessing the full extent of the damage. Thousands of people were displaced. It is one of four major earthquakes to hit the Americas and Southeast Asia in 2026, alongside Venezuela in June, Indonesia in August and Panama in October.

In a displacement response, the units themselves are only half the answer. What determines whether a site works is how the units relate to each other and to the ground between them:

A detachable container house is a steel frame with interchangeable wall, roof and floor panels bolted together on site. In a camp context that means the site can be assembled by local labour rather than by specialist crews, the units can be taken apart and re-sited as the camp is reorganised, and a damaged panel can be replaced without condemning the whole building. It is also the reason a single panel system can deliver houses, a school room, a clinic and a store room without four separate supply chains.

Sizes can be produced to the client's own dimensions. Panel core material is selectable — rock wool, glass wool, EPS, PU or PIR, magnesium oxide board or phenolic — with floor boards in 15 mm and 18 mm; all boards we use are asbestos-free. For a Colombian siting, the practical choices are usually the panel core for the climate of the receiving department and whether sanitation is in-unit or shared.

Humanitarian and government buyers in this situation are working to a date, not a design competition. The information that produces a usable quotation fastest is: number of units, occupancy per unit, in-unit or shared sanitation, receiving department and site condition, and whether the units are transitional only or expected to become permanent. We manufacture in Suzhou, China and ship to humanitarian procurement programmes worldwide.

The visualisation at the top of this article shows how the units sit together on a site. The photograph below shows a single unit on its own: an actual detachable container house from our production line, in a white finish, on a prepared base. This is the building that replaces the tent — a lockable structure with a floor, walls and services, which is what makes the difference between an emergency shelter and somewhere a family can live for a year.