Under the direction of specialists from Cooperative Housing Foundation (CHF, a U.S. NGO), neighbors of La Concordia, a hamlet outside Usulután, build a shelter for the Chávez family, whose heavy tile roof caved in due to the Jan. 13 earthquake. The department of Usulután suffered the greatest amount of damage of El Salvador’s 14 departments. Over 200,000 families lost their homes.

After Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras in 1998, CHF built over 3,000 of these wooden-framed, plastic-wrapped and sheetmetal-roofed shelters. In El Salvador, they hope to erect as many as 8,000 units in less than two months for people who lost their homes due to the Jan. 13 earthquake. Photo by Peter Bate—IDB.