shelter_centres – Syria Report

In the aftermath of the February 6 earthquake, many survivors whose homes were either partially or fully destroyed sought shelter in dozens of shelter centres set up hastily in Lattakia city. The number of these shelters has decreased in recent days to just 15, with many people returning to their homes after ascertaining their structural safety, according to The Syria Report’s local correspondent.

Schools

After a building just across from their house collapsed, Munira and her husband, both in their late 60s, moved into a shelter centre set up in a Lattakia city school. According to Munira, all 24 residents of the shelter centre went without any aid for days following the earthquake. She began to develop severe kidney pain due to the extreme cold and from sitting on wooden seats meant for students and had to be transported to a hospital.

Munira told The Syria Report that most children in the shelter centre developed colds. It wasn’t until the fifth day after the earthquake that volunteer teams from NGOs arrived and handed out meals, mattresses, blankets, medicine and baby formula.

From the shelter centre, Munira and her husband returned to their home, which structural safety teams hadn’t yet inspected. Though the couple feared aftershocks and the house potentially had some invisible cracks, it was more comfortable for them than the shelter centre.

The shelters set up in Lattakia city’s school buildings are the worst in terms of services provided to residents. Even before the earthquake, the schools were unclean and faced continuous power cuts, poorly maintained bathrooms and hot water shortages. Initially, shelters were set up in 25 school buildings, where people took refuge after the quake. People stayed in classrooms without blankets, electricity, heating devices, hot water, or working bathrooms.

In some cases, women faced harassment in the shelters, mainly due to a lack of management supervision. Naila, a woman in her 20s, lives alone. Part of the building collapsed due to the earthquake, so she went with her neighbours to a shelter centre in a nearby school. While there, a young man tried to exploit Naila’s need for housing, repeatedly offering to move her into an apartment where she could live on her own. When she refused, the man made an offer of customary marriage. To escape the situation, Naila went to stay with relatives outside of Lattakia city.

The Municipal Stadium and the Sports City

Said and his family were displaced to Lattakia’s Municipal Stadium when their house partially collapsed in the quake. Because Said is active in a civil society NGO, his family was able to use his connections to obtain an electric heater. He could also find some privacy for his sisters in a separate room.

Aid organisations assisted in the stadium shelter centre immediately after the earthquake, including three meals daily for residents and medicine for those in need. According to The Syria Report’s local correspondent, the stadium is among the best shelter centres in Lattakia. About 4,000 sought shelter there right after the quake, though only 300 remained at the time of writing. Electricity is available in the stadium, with only two-hour daily cutoffs.

The same goes for the existing shelter centre in Lattakia Sports City, which received many displaced people from Aleppo and the rural parts of the Lattakia governorate throughout the war. The two centres were ideal for communicating with NGOs and government organisations to provide aid.

Mosques

Rama, her husband, and her infant son were displaced to a neighbourhood mosque after cracks appeared in their home due to the earthquake. The family of three suffered from a lack of privacy in the shelter centre. Everyone who had fled there lived together in the central part of the mosque with no dividers, which made changing clothes and bathing very difficult, especially for women.

Food supplies arrived at the mosque in the very first days after the quake but were distributed in an unorganised manner. It wasn’t until six days after the earthquake that aid organisations began paying attention to women’s needs. Nevertheless, residents say that the mosque shelter centres are among the best because they are cleaned regularly and have steady electricity and hot water supplies. The biggest issue in these shelters is the lack of privacy, especially for women.

Providing shelter for people whose homes were damaged during the February 6 earthquake remains an ongoing challenge for NGOs in Syria.

The Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), affiliated with the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) group that controls most of the Idlib governorate, has taken on the role of coordinator to direct the response to the dozens of shelter centres that have since appeared, most of them set up in chaos.

According to a map by the SSG’s General Directorate of Humanitarian Affairs, 52 temporary shelter centres were set up in Idlib and distributed to NGOs responding to the disaster. These centres now house more than 7,500 families or around 37,500 people. Most of these centres were on publicly owned or endowment properties, such as schoolyards, parks, mosques and playgrounds. Others were old, existing encampments already housing people displaced from other parts of Syria. With the owners’ approval, some temporary shelter centres were also set up on privately owned properties.

According to statistics from the SSG’s Emergency Response Committee, as of March 02, some 10,210 families have been impacted by the earthquake. Not all of them are living in the temporary shelter centres, however. Some stay with relatives, while others erected tents near their destroyed and damaged homes.

Meanwhile, more than 690 Syrians moved from Turkey to the temporary shelter centres in Idlib as of February 26, according to the General Directorate of Humanitarian Affairs. Ankara had allowed Syrians residing in earthquake-damaged parts of Turkey to return temporarily to Syria in what has come to be known as “earthquake vacation”. According to statistics from the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing, around 15,000 Syrians crossed into Idlib on such trips as of March 01.

Of the 52 shelter centres, 23 are in Harem and its surrounding countryside, which suffered massive earthquake damage. In that city alone, 35 buildings fully collapsed, and 360 were cracked, killing around 500 people. The surrounding countryside saw the collapse of a newly-built residential project in the town of Basania, killing 200 people.

Most shelter centres lack essential services such as water, sewage and electricity. Some NGOs have resorted to providing portable bathrooms, installing tanks for drinking and cleaning water, and covering the floors of some centres with gravel. Others set up tents, pour cement floors, and dig waterways to drain sewage water.

NGOs have also given out tents, mattresses, blankets and meals in coordination with the General Directorate of Humanitarian Affairs to ensure aid reaches all the shelter centres. That said, there is a lack of coordination on the ground, with more than one NGO often distributing aid in one centre.

Notably, the price of tents has doubled in Idlib due to the huge demand from individuals and NGOs. For example, a medium-quality locally-made tent went from USD 150 to USD 350 after the earthquake. These tents are usually made locally by metalworkers who fashion the iron poles and cut the canvas and plastic insulation. The increased prices have come alongside worsened quality as workers use poorer quality canvas and plastic and employ lower manufacturing standards to keep up with demand.

The aid response has varied from one area of Idlib governorate to another. Help has still not reached the Al-Maland, Marand, Al-Najia and Badama villages in the countryside west of Jisr Al-Shughour, where residents still urgently need tents. Many of them have been forced to sleep out in the open.

It is unclear what will happen to the residents of Idlib’s temporary shelter centres in the long term and how long they will reside there. No real steps have been taken to set up new housing for them that is organised and serviced by quality infrastructure. There are also still no plans for restoring damaged homes. Many people now living in these shelters fear they will simply become new camps, added to the dozens of existing camps for forcibly displaced people who came to Idlib from elsewhere in Syria.

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