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player ready...If you’re planning a beach vacation, Julia Deluca and Megan Parsons would like you to consider Fukushima, Japan. They say a beach house costs only about $86 a month to rent and there’s an award-winning park and aquarium nearby.
There are, however, a few drawbacks.
“They do have tsunamis every once in a while,” said Deluca, a seventh grader at Deer Path Middle School. “There are earthquakes that come with the tsunamis.”
“There is some radiation (from a 2011 nuclear plant meltdown) but it’s not as bad as it was,” Parsons said.
While real-world developers might shy away from the difficult locale, for the seventh grade science students at Deer Path dealing with the challenges was the whole point. As part of a school project, students were assigned a place that was challenged by earthquakes, weather, volcanoes or other natural disasters and tasked with creating a real estate development.
“They had to make the undesirable, desirable,” said Elizabeth Pengelly, a science teacher at the school. “How do you make this area appealing even though these natural disasters are happening?”
On Jan. 19, seventh graders Jake Terry and Thomas Philpott answered that question for Quito, Ecuador. They were among a few dozen science students who had set up a presentation on a table in the school library. Potential “investors” – parents and Lake Forest residents – wandered around to hear the students make their pitches while considering where to invest a theoretical $10,000.
“We’re selling a dragon fruit farm,” Terry said. “It’s a red and green fruit. It has white flesh and black seeds. It’s very popular. The soil is very rich due to volcanic ash.”
The volcano is 90 kilometers away so Terry said an eruption wouldn’t impact the farm. The earthquakes, however, might.
“I would suggest a house that has a good foundation or rollers that make it roll with the earthquake rather than against it,” Terry said. “When it shakes, it allows the house to move freely.”
Caroline Mower and Julianna Hunt chose to turn a minus into a plus. The two proposed a hotel on Mount Merapi, Indonesia. There are small earthquakes every two to three years but the larger issue is a volcano.
“We have an evacuation plan,” Hunt said. “We have vans that would take people to a safe zone only five miles from the hotel and a team that monitors the volcano daily. And helicopters.”
When not being used for evacuations, those helicopters would be used for tours above the volcano.
“We’re selling the volcano as a good thing,” Mower said.
Kathy Milliman was impressed with the students’ work, although she has no plans to visit Mount Merapi.
“I’m a big water person,” Milliman said. “It seems like a cool place to visit but I like water. It has nothing to do with their presentation, which was great.”
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