PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Ask any of the hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims living outdoors in Haiti’s shattered capital and you’re apt to get the same plea: “Give us a tent.”
Few will get one. Aid agencies and Haitian officials have given up plans to shelter the homeless in tents, even if that means many will likely face hurricane season camped out under sheets of plastic.
Tents are too big, too costly and too inefficient, aid groups say. So Haitians must swelter under flimsy tarps until fixed shelters can be built — though no one believes nearly enough will be up in time for spring storms.
“A tent would give us more space. There are too many people in here,” said Marie-Mona Destiron, sweating under the hot, blue light of her family’s donated plastic tarp. When it rains, she said, water slides through the gaps and turns the dirt floor to mud.
Destiron, 45, got her tarp from U.S. soldiers. Her husband, Joselin Edouard, tied it to a mahogany tree on a dusty slope below the country club that the soldiers use as a forward-operating base. It is home to them and their six children.
Aid officials at first announced a campaign to put the homeless in tents and appealed for donations from around the world. About 49,000 tents had reached Haiti when the government said Wednesday that it was opting for plastic sheets.
