Officials Close Florida’s Largest Tent City : Recovery: Some hurricane victims are moving to temporary mobile homes. Others have no place to go.

For Belinda Sheldon, it was time to go Friday. For Frank Spurling, there was nowhere to go.

The two were among the hundreds of people still living at Harris Field, Florida’s largest remaining tent city for victims of Hurricane Andrew, as officials began to close it down.

Officials had hoped to have everyone out of the camp by Friday, but they decided late in the day that about 20 people could remain until water service is connected at the temporary mobile homes where they are moving.

Sheldon said she was anxious to get into one of the homes, but Spurling faced an uncertain future.

Closure of the camp, where Spurling worked, means that he is losing his only job after losing his home to the hurricane. And to complicate matters, he said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had lost his application for a mobile home, leaving him with no place to go.

Officials promised Spurling and others who had not found homes that they could move to other camps that are still open.

“This stinks what they’re doing to us right now,” he said as workers dismantled tents. “It’s enough what we’re going through already. Now they’re making us go through it again.”

Hundreds of other people lined up to be assigned a mobile home, or pleaded into telephones for relatives to take them in.

“I don’t want to go out of one tent into another one,” said Jim Baker, a 60-year-old cook who combed through newspaper classified advertisements seeking a permanent place to live.

The displaced residents will be allowed to remain in the homes for 18 months while they repair damaged houses or find new ones. The city has placed a moratorium on permanent mobile homes because so many were destroyed by the hurricane.

Harris Field had about 600 residents Friday morning, down from a peak of 1,250 shortly after it opened on Sept. 2. The expense of operating the camp fell on the city of Homestead after Wednesday’s pullout of the Marines who built it and provided meals, maintenance and other services.

City officials said it was no longer cost-effective to house people there. The site, on a main route to the Florida Keys, will be converted back into a park with the help of corporate contributions.

Harris Field was the largest of five tent cities built for victims of the hurricane. Its 108 tents for civilians and 35 for the Marines became a symbol of the massive rescue effort.

Two other tent cities are still open. Officials said they had no timetable for dismantling them.