Whirrrrr-skreeek, whir-skreek. Ka-thunk. Mid-racket, brown blocks emerge. Engineers developed this machine, a mobile brick factory, to help rebuild a country.
War in Ukraine has ravaged homes, hospitals, and schools. Nic Matich and Blake Stacey watched from Australia as parts of Ukraine crumbled. They wanted to use their talents to assist those who lost the roofs over their heads.
The pair founded Mobile Crisis Construction (MCC). The company seeks “to rapidly rebuild durable infrastructure”—basic services—in areas devastated by war.
MCC’s breakthrough is a mobile block-making plant. These traveling factories arrive in 20-foot shipping containers. They can produce building materials in a fraction of the usual time.
The factories make LEGO-style blocks, or “LayGos,” from demolished bricks, wood, glass, plastic, etc. Sadly, war-torn places like Ukraine have an abundance of debris available for that purpose.
“It’s an emotional thing for [Ukrainians] to be sorting through their rubble,” Stacey says in a video on MCC’s YouTube channel. “But also it’s a great emotional thing to be using it.”
The comparison to LEGO bricks is fitting. LayGos feature “bumps” or studs that let bricks join snugly without mortar. They can be laid quickly without highly skilled laborers.
Once on site, an MCC block factory requires only a generator for power and a hammer mill for crushing debris. Workers mix in cement and water and pour the mixture into the block machine.
In seven days, the concrete cures enough so that the blocks can be used for building. Holes in the new bricks allow for adding steel rebar for extra strength. MCC blocks make walls that are earthquake-, fire-, and cyclone-resistant. Workers add floors, pipes, roofs, and wiring to complete the building.
A fully functioning MCC factory can produce 8,000 blocks in about eight hours. MCC says that number is enough to build three large houses, a school, or a hospital in a single week. Someday, the blocks could help at natural disaster sites too.
Manfred Hin works on the MCC team. Soon after Russia’s Ukraine invasion, “I saw this old lady sitting in front of her completely destroyed house, and it just cut deep to my heart,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Look, I can help this woman.’” A builder by trade, Hin has a Ukraine visa and assists on the ground there.
The situation is “harrowing,” Hin laments. He grew up in post-war Germany and knows firsthand about destruction. “Just pray for Ukraine,” Hin pleads in an MCC video. “Don’t forget Ukraine.”
Stacey agrees, and adds, “It’s a labor of love.”
Beloved, let us love one another. — 1 John 4:7
Why? God gifts everyone to help others in some way—whether working on site or praying from afar.
