All night rain adds to misery for Haitians living in camp
Published: March 20, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE: All-night rain made life even tougher on Friday for Haitians living in the many tent camps scattered around the capital Port-au-Prince.
It was the heaviest rainfall since a January 12 earthquake that killed more than 217,000 according to latest figures from Haitian President Preval.
One million lost their homes and are now living in tents or makeshift shelters.
''It rained all night last night and we had to stay up all night. If you look here, you have mud, dirty water, garbage everywhere,'' a woman said.
''I am under the rain, all wet, I have a small child sick in my arms, I don't even have a tarpaulin,'' another one said.
International aid donors, the U.S. military and the United Nations have provided tents and plastic sheeting.
The prospect of more rains calls for longer term solutions.
The government said it wanted to relocate the homeless into four to five large camps that should be better equipped against the rain.
In some areas, neat encampments of uniform foreign-provided tents have begun to sprout but the majority of the survivors' camps are still sprawling squalid affairs, with most of the crude shelters hastily constructed from any scrap of fabric or plastic the occupants have been able to lay hands on.
They are packed together haphazardly, often close to raw open sewers and many lacking even basic sanitation.
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