The United Nations representative for disaster risk reduction warned Thursday that the start of the hurricane season in May could make the situation in Haiti worse, after a quake killed 170,000 people.
"The hurricane season starts in about three months and there are probably 200,000 families without a roof," Margareta Wahlstrom said during a press conference.
"How are they going to be sheltered, how are they going to have access to clean water and get employed again, so that their disaster, that has already destroyed much of their life, is not exacerbated further?"
Wahlstrom urged humanitarian organisations on the ground to rehouse those people without any shelter "in safe areas".
Organisations would have to agree on the land where temporary settlements could go up and find areas with maximum shelter from high winds.
Wahlstrom also stressed that the settlements be equipped with drainage systems and have access to clean water.
In such a short time frame, Wahlstrom said the housing solutions would be a mixture of "good quality tents" and "ready-built constructions".
With deforestation in Haiti a major problem, local industries did not necessarily exist to produce ready-built constructions, Wahlstrom said.
But she added that she was confident "the very large countries" involved in the aid effort would provide these.
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