Gary Christ
The mine stomping machine
By Whitney Woodward
Daily Herald Staff Writer (Naperville, IL, USA)
Posted Monday, June 05, 2006
Gary Christ of Crystal Lake is preparing a machine he built for battle.On his family’s farm, he’s flicking levers and punching buttons, making the machine drop, pick up and move a 1,000-pound steel box slightly larger than a recycling bin. The box is filled with independent metal rods — heavy enough to thoroughly crush a can of cat food, his selected test subject, or a land mine.
And crushing land mines is exactly what Christ built his machine to do.
The apparatus, made of reused and recycled machinery parts, will be sent to Cambodia, where a nonprofit group will use it to stamp out some of the explosives that plague the country.
“It’s just unbelievable to see (the impact) land mines have on the country,” Christ said. “The lightweight design of this machine allows usage in soft ground, and the simple lifting and dropping action is less apt to be tangled in overgrown areas that cause (other) machines great difficulties.”
Cambodia, sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam, has one of the highest numbers of land mines, according to the United Nations Development Program. Mines are left over from years of civil war, the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, and the Vietnam War.
Now, 13 years after the official end of the civil war, Cambodians still deal with the repercussions of the conflict.
One in 256 people is a land mine amputee, Christ said; few have money to buy wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs.
“Cambodia continues to be one of the countries most plagued by anti-personnel mines,” said Jackie Hansen of the International Coalition to Ban Landmines. “Though the conflict has long ended, civilians continue to be maimed and killed by this weapon as they work in their fields and carry on their daily activities.”
Christ decided to build a demining machine during a missionary trip in January 2005 to install septic systems.
During the trip, residents discovered a mine at an orphanage Christ was scheduled to work at. The event prompted him to brainstorm ways to safely clear mines.
“I got to Siem Reap and I went to a market and I just feel this (tapping) on my leg. I looked down and it was a man who had no legs,” Christ said. “And you look around, and you see another, and another.”
There, also, Christ met Sem Sovantha, director of the Angkor Association for the Disabled, who lost his legs after he stepped on a mine.
About half of the Siem Reap area in northwest Cambodia, where Sovantha’s association is based, has yet to be swept for mines, Sovantha said.
There are two basic types of mines: anti-personnel and anti-vehicle. Anti-vehicle mines — the kind typically seen in movies — can be bigger than a volleyball and are triggered by heavy pressure, such as a truck or tank rolling over them.
Smaller anti-personnel mines are designed to injure — not kill — a person so that during fighting, the enemy must expend resources to take care of the injured. These pose the greatest threat to civilians and are the ones Christ’s machine will detonate.
Most demining is done in a slow, time-consuming way: locating a device with a metal detector and then poking it with a pole to detonate it.
“There are four NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who work for clearing the land mines throughout the country, but the work has not been enough,” Sovantha said.
So, Christ decided to make a demining machine Sovantha’s group could use. After more than a year of building and trials, Christ says he’s satisfied. “It was truly an obsession to develop a machine to remove land mines,” Christ said.
Using a host of items — ranging from hydraulic cylinders from a lawnmower to snowplow parts — Christ built a machine he believes can apply enough pressure, through the dropping of the weight, to detonate mines.
Now he is putting the final touches on the machine — he plans to install bulletproof glass around the operator’s area — and waiting for the all-clear from the Cambodian government to send it overseas.
Sovantha said he hopes Christ’s machine can clear areas the NGOs cannot reach.
The project, which has been in the works for almost a year, has cost Christ roughly 2,000 working hours and hundreds of dollars.
But Christ says he doesn’t mind. In fact, he plans to use his experiences to speak to schoolchildren about Cambodia and is working to form a nonprofit organization.
“I used to make money, and that didn’t last long,” Christ said. “So now I make good feelings. That seems to last longer.”
And crushing land mines is exactly what Christ built his machine to do.
The apparatus, made of reused and recycled machinery parts, will be sent to Cambodia, where a nonprofit group will use it to stamp out some of the explosives that plague the country.
“It’s just unbelievable to see (the impact) land mines have on the country,” Christ said. “The lightweight design of this machine allows usage in soft ground, and the simple lifting and dropping action is less apt to be tangled in overgrown areas that cause (other) machines great difficulties.”
Cambodia, sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam, has one of the highest numbers of land mines, according to the United Nations Development Program. Mines are left over from years of civil war, the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, and the Vietnam War.
Now, 13 years after the official end of the civil war, Cambodians still deal with the repercussions of the conflict.
One in 256 people is a land mine amputee, Christ said; few have money to buy wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs.
“Cambodia continues to be one of the countries most plagued by anti-personnel mines,” said Jackie Hansen of the International Coalition to Ban Landmines. “Though the conflict has long ended, civilians continue to be maimed and killed by this weapon as they work in their fields and carry on their daily activities.”
Christ decided to build a demining machine during a missionary trip in January 2005 to install septic systems.
During the trip, residents discovered a mine at an orphanage Christ was scheduled to work at. The event prompted him to brainstorm ways to safely clear mines.
“I got to Siem Reap and I went to a market and I just feel this (tapping) on my leg. I looked down and it was a man who had no legs,” Christ said. “And you look around, and you see another, and another.”
There, also, Christ met Sem Sovantha, director of the Angkor Association for the Disabled, who lost his legs after he stepped on a mine.
About half of the Siem Reap area in northwest Cambodia, where Sovantha’s association is based, has yet to be swept for mines, Sovantha said.
There are two basic types of mines: anti-personnel and anti-vehicle. Anti-vehicle mines — the kind typically seen in movies — can be bigger than a volleyball and are triggered by heavy pressure, such as a truck or tank rolling over them.
Smaller anti-personnel mines are designed to injure — not kill — a person so that during fighting, the enemy must expend resources to take care of the injured. These pose the greatest threat to civilians and are the ones Christ’s machine will detonate.
Most demining is done in a slow, time-consuming way: locating a device with a metal detector and then poking it with a pole to detonate it.
“There are four NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who work for clearing the land mines throughout the country, but the work has not been enough,” Sovantha said.
So, Christ decided to make a demining machine Sovantha’s group could use. After more than a year of building and trials, Christ says he’s satisfied. “It was truly an obsession to develop a machine to remove land mines,” Christ said.
Using a host of items — ranging from hydraulic cylinders from a lawnmower to snowplow parts — Christ built a machine he believes can apply enough pressure, through the dropping of the weight, to detonate mines.
Now he is putting the final touches on the machine — he plans to install bulletproof glass around the operator’s area — and waiting for the all-clear from the Cambodian government to send it overseas.
Sovantha said he hopes Christ’s machine can clear areas the NGOs cannot reach.
The project, which has been in the works for almost a year, has cost Christ roughly 2,000 working hours and hundreds of dollars.
But Christ says he doesn’t mind. In fact, he plans to use his experiences to speak to schoolchildren about Cambodia and is working to form a nonprofit organization.
“I used to make money, and that didn’t last long,” Christ said. “So now I make good feelings. That seems to last longer.”
3 comments:
Thank you Christ for your great machine. Thank you for serving the humanity. The people of Cambodia will be forever grateful to your invention. Cambodia is now your country, too.
Christ have save us all.
Assuming that the Cambodian governments is going to approve of this apparatus, is G. Christ going to test this on a real landmine prior to unleashing it on trusting people? Otherwise a person may assume it works and not take necessary precautions and rather than lose legs, they lose their life. Just wondering.....
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