Red Cross fears for Haiti camp residents as rainy season approaches

The Red Cross is calling for more land to be made available for organised temporary settlements as the threat of floods looms.

More than 600 camps have sprung up on patches of available land across the quake zone.

The Red Cross said camps around Port-au-Prince are severely overcrowded, with some on low lying land and "perilously vulnerable" to flooding brought by seasonal rains.

“More land needs to be made available for organised temporary settlements,” said David Peppiatt, International Director of the British Red Cross.

“We need to allow people to get away from areas which are likely to flood and into settlements where there is more space.”

With work underway at just one new organised resettlement at a disused airport and the rainy season just weeks away, the Red Cross said more settlements were desperately needed.

Dan Sanger is leader of the British Red Cross sanitation team in Haiti. He said poor drainage had made most of the camps “hellish”.

“People are still turning up daily with only blankets for shelter which give no protection against the rain, they are hanging up their clothes and possessions to dry them out but they will be drenched again in the next downpour,” he said.

“People need to get to areas with proper drainage because the rain can come at anytime now and the ground will become a quagmire. At the moment that land just isn’t available.”

The Red Cross is supplying waterproof shelter materials to 100,000 people, including tents, tarpaulins, plastic sheeting, and shelter tool kits. It is reaching an average of 2,500 people a day with the items.

Overall, the ‘shelter cluster’ – a partnership of agencies coordinating the provision of shelter of which Red Cross has been appointed the overall lead – has distributed shelter materials to more than 300,000 people and aims is to have reached at least 600,000 by early March.

“We have to recognise the different shelter needs of people in Haiti. No one solution will work for all. The focus of our shelter assistance has to be tarpaulins as they are practical and versatile, especially in the improvised settlements, but tents also have a role to play, especially for the most vulnerable who may be unable to build their own shelters,” added Peppiatt.

“It’s about reaching as many people as possible with the support which will be most useful to them.”

Red Cross is moving quickly to provide “transitional housing” in the longer term. The transitional housing consists of temporary but solid structures resistant to the elements until reconstruction allows people to move to permanent homes.

A first prototype Red Cross transitional house is being built and full-scale procurement of materials has begun with plans for at least 30,000 more.