ABSTRACT
After the disaster, hundreds of thousands of people were left displaced from their homes. Flooding was to blame in many areas along the coast, but failures in what was supposed to be reliable infrastructure were to blame elsewhere. Many people had to flee their homes with nothing but what was on their backs and, when it all passed, found there was nothing to return to. Their homes and their communities were either gone or were no longer theirs to inhabit.
It fell to the overwhelmed government to find shelter from the unforgiving elements for its rattled citizens and avert a humanitarian crisis. Schools and stadiums were used at first, becoming converging points for international aid. Temporary housing was erected within weeks so that schools could re-open and people could be offered a modicum of normalcy that was in short supply in the simmering cauldrons of cot-strewn gymnasiums.
Temporary housing was an improvement but was not home. The quarters were tiny and crammed together. In many cases, families were housed far from their communities of origin and far from surviving members of their communities despite having often lived together for centuries. A sense of alienation seemed inescapable in these settlements, whether they were far from town centers or integrated into them. The latter was often no better and sometimes worse, as the evacuees often faced discrimination and resentment from their host communities. Fearing the unknown, many parents refused to let their children even play outside.
Worst of all, there was soon a clear sense that the arrangement was not temporary. Unless the residents were self-sufficient or had welcoming family elsewhere, they were reliant for help on a government that seemed to have no other long term solution other than to leave them there. Thus arose a situation in which those who remained in the settlements were the most helpless and needy and precisely those for whom the government had the least to offer.
