This Haitian family sleeps secure under a ShelterBox tent. - Photo by Mark Pearson

As land ownership issues and logistics delay the massive rebuilding efforts needed, the basic tarpaulin shelters received by the majority of those made homeless is proving little match for heavy rains and the impending hurricane season.

Additional strain is put on the capital, Port-au-Prince, as host families are unable to support those who lost everything and people are migrating back to the struggling city.

ShelterBox Response Team volunteer, Per Dahlstrom (CA), described the situation as “real misery”.

During his recent trip to Haiti, distributing ShelterBox disaster relief tents, he witnessed the football-pitch sized camps where in five foot by five foot areas families had just a tarpaulin held up with branches to call home.

“The conditions were squalid and every time it rains the ground just turns to muck,” said Dahlstrom.

Phenomenal resilience

These heavy rains are now a daily occurrence, washing the streets with litter and posing further risk through the spread of diseases.

Dahlstrom worked to provide shelter for orphans who were returning to the city as their host families struggled to cope – returning to the only stability they know, the school they attended before the earthquake but those are now just a distant memory.

“The resilience of the Haitian people is phenomenal,” said Tom Henderson, ShelterBox Founder and CEO, “but they’re still in desperate need of our help. The shelter provided by tarps isn’t safe, isn’t secure and will not stand up to the heavy winds and rains we can expect in the hurricane season.”

The ShelterBox disaster relief tent undergoes extensive testing. The tent and its poles are tested in wind and rain tunnels, with winds reaching up to 120kph. In Haiti, tens of thousands of families are now rebuilding their lives in these tents. The first of these tents were erected in January and they remain to be a secure, safe shelter for thousands of families whose only alternative is a tarp or a transitional shelter that has not been built.

Destruction beyond belief

The response to the Haiti earthquake has been the biggest, longest and most complex in the 10-year history of the international disaster relief charity.

The first ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) was mobilized 12 minutes after the earthquake struck. Now, six months later, 22,192 ShelterBoxes have been delivered in Haiti, enough aid for more than 220,000 people.

“This has been the most challenging disaster we’ve ever had to face. The scale of the destruction was beyond belief,” said Tom Henderson.

“Huge Difference”

“With the intensive training and on-the-ground experiences we receive as SRT, nothing quite prepares one for the wholesale damage and widespread hardship that is evident at every turn in Haiti,” said Bill Decker an SRT member.

“The households and businesses in rubble, especially near the epicenter in Leogane, was beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I felt like what I was doing as an individual was only a drop in the bucket, but then I realized that I couldn’t drive past these affected areas without seeing a ShelterBox tent with a family inside and I knew that our teams have made a huge difference.”

Henderson said, “During the coming months we’ll be sending another 5,000 ShelterBoxes into Haiti which will give families the safe, secure shelter they need to start rebuilding their lives.”