Temporary Shelters offer little Protection from the Rain in Haiti

Last weekends headlines concerned two million left homeless in Chile.

Will Haiti be forgotten now that a bigger quake has hit elsewhere? It seems Haiti still holds the trump card for suffering and more is on the way with the coming rains.

Torrential rains have begun in Haiti before the official start of the rainy season. Approximately 600,000 are living in makeshift tents in Port-au-Prince. They have gotten a taste of what is to come. While people in Hawaii and Japan dodged a bullet with a tsunami warning, people in Haiti contended with a heavy downpour.

There is little people can do to protect themselves. Getting wet from above is one thing, but being swept away from surges of water another. I visited several tent cities that have been established around Port-au-Prince and saw only a handful of sturdy tents. Most people had shelters made with sheets, wood cardboard and scraps of blue plastic tarp.

Attached are images of some of the temporary shelters people built for themselves in Port-au-Prince. USAID had received reams of plastic to distribute while I was in Haiti. Hopefully that plastic has replaced some of the cardboard and sheets that I photographed.Click here to see a set of images on temporary housing in Port-au-Prince's tent cities.