The First Rain Since The Earthquake Falls In Port-au-Prince

Reporting from Port-au-Prince

Rain started falling in Port-au-Prince at 11 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday.

The rain is hard at times and it is the first of the rainy season. NGO’s, government agencies, and the UN had been worried about the rain since most earthquake survivors are living in tents.

There dozens of tent cities in Port-au-Prince and across the country. These tent cities can have as few as 50 people to as many as 3,000-5,000.

The tents are makeshift shelters, often made of cardboard or bed-sheets. Most of the tent cities sit on fields of dirt, if enough water falls the soft ground will make the sticks and branches people are using to the raise their tents to collapse.

Only about 20 percent of the survivors have tents that have been donated by NGO’s. Those tents are able to withstand some rain. UN Assistant Secretary General and Interim Head of the Stabilization Mission in Haiti told the NJP last Thursday that his priority was to give proper shelter and tents to survivors due to the looming rainy season.

Light to heavy precipitation is in the forecast for the Western part of Haiti until tomorrow evening.

Editor’s Note: Dolores M. Bernal will continue to file stories from Haiti this week. You can follow her on Twitter.

Be Sociable, Share!