The psalmist this Sunday asks to be rescued and delivered so as to take refuge in the Lord, while the gospel speaks of a time when “severe famine spread over the entire land.” While the effort to find survivors in the rubble of Haiti’s earthquake winds down, some 1 million newly homeless Haitians still need refuge and deliverance from homelessness and hunger.

The collapse of much of Haiti’s capital has left a large part of the nation struggling to find a place to sleep, and there are too few tents, let alone safe buildings, to put them in. Competition for the smattering of canvas homes has boiled over into arguments and fights, a sign of the desperation felt by the hundreds of thousands of homeless people struggling for shelter. Haiti’s president has asked the world for 200,000 tents and said he would sleep in one himself.

The International Organization for Migration has so far been able to fly in only a fraction of the family-size tents needed. As a stopgap the organization is trying to rush in tens of thousands of tarpaulins and plastic sheets--an upgrade for people miserably squatting under bed sheets or cardboard.

Two weeks into the quake catastrophe, food remains scarce for many of the survivors despite the efforts of the United Nations, the U.S. military, and scores of international aid agencies. Haitian leaders said coordination has been poor, while relief experts said this disaster is presenting unprecedented challenges.

The World Food Program acknowledged that rising tensions and security incidents--including people rushing distribution points for food--have hampered deliveries. Since the first days of the massive relief effort, however, other problems have also delayed aid: blocked and congested roads, shortages of trucks, a crippled seaport, and the overloaded Port-au-Prince airport.

Particularly grave is the plight of many thousands of children scattered among Port-au-Prince’s makeshift camps. They have nobody to care for them, aid workers said, leaving them without protection against disease, child predators, and other risks.

“They are extremely vulnerable,” said Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children. She said U.N. experts estimate there may be 1 million unaccompanied or orphaned children or youngsters who lost at least one parent in the January 12 quake.

Source: Articles by Shaul Schwarz for TIME and Vivian Sequera, Ben Fox, Greg Bull,
and Jonathan M. Katz for Associated Press