When Tony Ruiz got a call from a friend at the Nashville, Tenn.-based Servant Group International looking for a way to help the earthquake victims in Turkey, he seized the opportunity. Ruiz's San Diego-based company, Simple Building Systems (www.simplebuilding.com), offers several low-cost concrete and steel building systems - perfectly suited for erecting economical, sturdy structures.

"We'll be doing five simple modules in our first project there," he says. "They're about 20 feet wide by 20 feet long. The buildings will probably have metal trusses and galvanized roofing."

Ruiz says his concrete and metal structural systems exceed most seismic code requirements in the United States. "The University of Washington did extensive testing on them," he adds. Not only are the structural costs as low as $1 per square foot, but Ruiz's systems also have good insulating values, he says, thanks to a special concrete additive from B-Lite (www.b-lite.com), a Scottsdale, AZ, company.

"We really have the cheapest, strongest, building system on the planet," Ruiz maintains. "We've been around for 20 years, but we get a lot of market resistance. People still want their houses built out of things that rot and warp."