In the Temporary City, Night Is Like Forever : Hurricane: Bugs, humidity, hard cots and ragged nerves ambush sleep in the South Florida tent towns.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. —  Morning arrives none too soon in Tent City, with the growl of half a dozen military planes overhead. They zoom back and forth across the makeshift development, dousing it--and its new residents--with pungent gray clouds of insecticide intended to combat an army of mosquitoes.

It has been a rough night.

The weather forecasters had threatened rain with winds of as much as 45 m.p.h. About 10 p.m., the Marines come around, dropping the flaps on all the tents. Yes, they say, they know it would be sweltering with the flaps down. But better to sweat all night than get wet.

The rain and wind never come. But mosquitoes, fire ants and jet-black palmetto bugs--Florida’s version of a giant cockroach--do, another discomfort for the 1,200 people in South Florida who now call military tent cities their home.

These bare-bones encampments, more like a scene from a Third World country than America, are the shelter of last resort for those whose homes were devastated two weeks ago by Hurricane Andrew.

Late last week, after initial doubts that people would move into them, the population began to burgeon at the two largest tent cities, one at Harris Field in Homestead and the other in nearby Florida City. Officials say they expect the number of people in the tents to continue to increase as building inspectors condemn more dwellings and school officials reclaim classrooms that have been used as shelters.

A night spent at Harris Field, the more heavily populated of the two tent cities, reveals accommodations that are Spartan at best. Forgo any notion of mattresses: the cots, 14 to a tent, are metal-framed contraptions stretched with heavy canvas the same color as everything else here--drab olive green.

Pillows are not available. Each tent-dweller is issued one burgundy-colored woolen blanket, one white sheet, one thin white towel and a set of sundries: foot powder, shampoo, soap, razors, toothbrush and toothpaste. If one is daring enough, it is possible to sneak into the supply tent while the Marines are asleep and snatch an additional towel.

Yet to those who lost everything and remain shell-shocked from the storm, living in Tent City is not a burden but a comfort. It is safe and dry and there are hot meals and showers that work. Most of those who have come here have no families or friends with better quarters to share and no money to rebuild.

The Vega family arrived Friday night: 45-year-old Eddie, his wife and four kids. They had been living in a trailer park before the storm. The hurricane delivered its unkindest cuts to the many hundreds of trailers in South Florida, and the high winds rearranged the Vegas’ neighborhood with the ease of a petulant child throwing a game of Monopoly into the air.

“One trailer on top of the other on top of the other,” Eddie Vega moaned. “Everything is ruined.”

For a time, he and his family slept at a shelter at a high school in North Miami Beach, but they were forced out Friday afternoon when the shelter closed its doors to make way for students who will arrive next Monday.

“I think this is a very nice place,” Vega said. “They’re trying to help people. They’re trying to feed people, feed babies.”

Michele and Dominic Gosein are here, too, ensconced for the time being in Tent D-3 along with their five children, ages 2 to 11. Members of the Gosein family were among the first residents of Harris Field, fleeing a Homestead apartment devoured by Andrew’s 150 m.p.h. winds. They will never be able to return and, even if they could, there is nothing to return to. All their possessions were destroyed.

Dominic Gosein is disabled, and Michele lost her job after the hurricane because the store in which she worked was leveled.

“After the storm, we went back to the apartment,” she says in her lilting Haitian accent. “We had nowhere else to go. When we heard they were putting Tent City up we decided to give it a try. By Sunday, we had an eviction notice, and every time we had the slightest rain it would come in because the upstairs apartments had no roofs. It’s better here. At least we’re dry.”

Her husband, however, worries about disease. “They need to do something about the restrooms,” he says, referring to the dozens of portable johns scattered around the camp site. “With all these people now, it needs to be disinfected a little more often. That’s all we need, is to catch something now.”

When the Gosein family arrived last Wednesday night, there was no light in their tent and the cots were sinking into the rain-soaked ground.

Improvements have come slowly. By Thursday, the Marines, flown in from Camp Lejeune, N. C., to build and run this place, had installed lights--two bare bulbs inside each tent. By Friday, wooden packing pallets had gone down as flooring, but the Gosein children kept getting their feet stuck in the gaps between the boards. Saturday, the soldiers were nailing plywood boards over the pallets in some tents to create wooden flooring.

Some use humor to cope with these conditions. The men in B-12 posted a cardboard-and-crayon sign outside their tent. “Doo Drop Inn,” the sign reads. “Condo B, Apt. 12. Tent City, Fla. 33030. All wood floors and A. C.”

The Marines, meanwhile, promise that more creature comforts are on the way. Television sets are on order, as are VCRs and 80 movies, all rated G. Soccer balls, volley balls and horseshoes are also on the way. Live entertainment has already arrived: Friday night, the 13th Army Band of the Florida National Guard belted out some brassy tunes, the back of a Hertz truck its stage.

“Shake, shake, shaaaake. Shake, shake, shaaaake. Shake your booty. Shake your booooty,” the soldiers croon, and about a dozen little girls do so on a dirt dance floor.

Soon, some Marines join in, bulky Leathernecks in crew cuts and camouflage uniforms, leading the children in a line dance as they sweat in the hot night air. It is an odd sight, the Marines and the little girls, each with their hands clasped to the waist of another, shaking their booties as if the music would never stop.

But the music does stop, about 9 p.m., and then the reality of a night in Tent City sets in.

Inside the registration tent, Red Cross staffer Cecil Lettis, a 50ish man with a gentle smile and straight gray locks plastered to his perspiring brow, lays down the law to a couple of new arrivals, big men with tattoos.

“OK,” Lettis announces. “No illegal drugs, no alcohol, no weapons. No smoking in the tents, no cooking in the tents. You can come and go as you please. There is a curfew after 9 o’clock, so you can’t go out after 9 o’clock. The food tent is over there. Breakfast from 6 to 9. Lunch from 11 to 1. Dinner from 5 to 8.”

He continues, rapid fire, barely pausing to take a breath: “Showers? There’s hours set up, special time for men, special time for women. I can’t remember what they are, you’ll have to go check. Washing machines will be available starting Monday. The Marines will be doing your laundry. Port-o-lets, the johns, are all over the compound. Just look for ‘em. . . .”

Lettis fills out their registration cards, jotting down their names, “pre-disaster addresses,” and other essential data. In the space for “shelter location,” he writes: “Harris Field Tent City, Homestead, Fla.”

But the military, upon discovering that people were reluctant to move into the tent encampments, has given them a new name. Every officer has been instructed that “Tent City” is out. “Life Support Center” is now the operative term.

Reminded of the new name, Lettis rolls his eyes. “This is the way we started,” he scoffs. “If they wanted ‘em to be support centers, they should’ve said so. I’m an old dog. I can’t learn new tricks.”

Around the corner at the supply tent, dozens wait in line. Marines work by flashlight, handing out sheets and towels. A couple comes in with a 6-month-old baby, asking for milk. The mother is given formula instead. A volunteer, entering the tent, says that an elderly woman needs absorbent underwear; she can’t make it to the bathroom in time.

“Man,” somebody says in the darkness. “This is like being in Woodstock.”

Ten-thirty p.m. Tent B-10. Two women are screaming at one another about a missing flashlight. They have just met, but they argue as if they have known one another for years. One storms out of the tent. The other runs after her, cursing and threatening. “I’m gonna . . . whip her ass, man!” she vows.

An elderly woman in a wheelchair has been politely trying to ignore the fracas by keeping her nose buried in the Miami Herald. “Uh oh,” she says, sounding worried. “They’re getting into a fight over a flashlight. This is terrible. Over a flashlight. Oh boy.”

Before long, a couple of Marines come by to break it up. The women return to their respective cots, still mumbling obscenities under their breath as others drift off into an uneasy sleep.

The night is anything but quiet. Helicopters periodically fly overhead--a constant reminder of the huge military presence in South Florida since the hurricane hit. A generator whirs noisily in the background, and a cricket stations itself somewhere inside the tent.

The woman in the end bunk keeps her radio tuned to a salsa station all night long, perhaps in an effort to drown out other sounds. Some people, sensing that the rains are not going to come, move their cots outside to get out of the heat. U.S. marshals patrol the grounds, in case they are needed to keep the peace.

It may be a long time before South Florida’s tent cities go out of business, and the military is prepared to stay for the duration. While the Red Cross keeps track of the residents, 610 soldiers run the Harris Field camp, which like its counterpart in Florida City has a capacity for 1,500 people. There are two other camps in the devastated area, but they are not as heavily populated as these two. In addition, there are plans for smaller camps to be built in neighborhoods for those who do not want to go far from home.

With 201 tents--108 for civilians, the rest for the Marines--plus shower, kitchen and laundry facilities and a medical clinic run by the Navy, the Harris Field camp sprawls across what used to be a city park. It is a busy operation. In its first five days, 3,400 gallons of diesel fuel were consumed, nearly 300 patients were treated at the clinic and more than 10,500 meals were served.

Among those doing the serving: U.S. Reps. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) and Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.), who could be found early Saturday morning at the MKT (military-speak for Mobile Kitchen Trailer) dishing out powdered eggs, ham and overcooked apples for breakfast. The pair, both members of the Congressional Fire and Emergency Services Caucus, had spent Friday night in Tent B-6.

“It was rough, rough, rough on that cot,” Weldon says. “I could never go through this for weeks and months.”

As he serves food, Weldon sounds more like a circus barker than a congressman: “Hi, how ya doin’ buddy? Ya lose everything?” he asks each weary tent dweller who passes through the line. “We’re both congressmen and we’re trying to do what we can to put your community back together. Hi. How ya doin’, buddy? Ya lose everything?”

Back in the registration tent, Ricky McNeal of Savannah, Ga., has come looking for his family. He drove all night to get to South Florida, not having heard from his mother and father since the hurricane hit. He knows they lost their home but does not know where they are. He paces back and forth anxiously as the Red Cross volunteer flips through the registration cards.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “We don’t have them.”

McNeal looks crushed. She tells him quickly there is another tent city down the road in Florida City and two shelters nearby. “I don’t know where to start,” the young man says.

The woman’s reply is intended to comfort McNeal. But it is also a lament for the odd collection of strangers who have been thrown together at Tent City, forced to begin their lives anew after losing everything to the most costly storm in U.S. history.

“Well,” she says gently, “all we can say is start at the beginning.”