They number some 200 families and growing, huddled around plastic tents that work as temporary shelter during summer but will do little to protect them from the frost of winter.
They live in homemade dome tents built with sticks and hung with pieces of plastic or a cloth flapping in the wind, feeble shelter from scorching daytime temperatures that reach 120 degrees.
For days, officers communicated with Dykes through a plastic pipe that rose up from the bunker, which was similar to a tornado shelter and apparently had running water, heat and cable television.