PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As officials focused Sunday on the Herculean task of this nation’s physical recovery — clearing the wreckage and setting up housing for the hundreds of thousands left homeless by an earthquake — desperate relatives of those still missing pleaded with the authorities not to give up the search.

With so many of this city’s buildings left in ruins and a public health crisis brewing from a failed sanitation system and a shortage of clean water, search and rescue efforts were winding down.

Across this devastated capital, demolition crews were razing buildings teetering dangerously close to collapse, and teams of American surveyors were expected to begin examining the stability of those structures left intact so that people whose homes were spared can move off the streets and businesses can go back to work.

International aid organizations said they had identified three sites to temporarily resettle the homeless. Brazilian teams have begun clearing a field in the Croix des Bouquets neighborhood for a tent city for some 10,000 people, according to Niurka Piñeiro, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, but it estimates the need at 100,000 tents for families of five, to assist 500,000 people.

Cleck on link to see photos and read the rest of the article, Courtesy of The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/americas/25haiti.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

 Reporting was contributed by Simon Romero, Deborah Sontag, Damien Cave, Marc Lacey and Ray Rivera.