PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Fear and confusion swept over more than 1 million homeless Haitians on Wednesday after officials advised them to abandon tent camps in Haiti’s rubble-choked capital before Tropical Storm Tomas arrives.
Few of the earthquake survivors who have spent nearly 10 months alternately baking and soaking under plastic tarps and tents have anywhere to go.
Painfully slow reconstruction from the quake, prior storms and the recent commitment of government resources to fight a growing cholera epidemic have left people with few options as overtaxed aid workers struggle to help.
“We are using radio stations to announce to people that if they don’t have a place to go, but they have friends and families, they should move into a place that is secure,” said civil protection official Nadia Lochard, who oversees the department that includes Port-au Prince.
The government says there are more than 1,000 shelters available, but the term is loose and can refer to any building expected to stand up to high winds. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said there is a need to identify safe public infrastructure for use as potential shelters during the storm.
Disaster officials have extended a red alert, their highest storm warning, to all regions of the country, as the storm is expected to wind its way up the west coast of Hispaniola through storm-vulnerable Gonaives and Haiti’s No. 2 city, Cap-Haitien, sometime Friday.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami announced a tropical-storm warning for Haiti, along with tropical-storm watches for Jamaica, the western Dominican Republic, eastern Cuba and the Bahamas.
