Haiti School Death Toll Passes 90

This news updete by www.thearynews.com





PORT-AU-PRINCE: The death toll in the collapse of a ramshackle school in Haiti rose above 90 on Saturday after rescue workers uncovered a room full of dead, many of them children, officials said.

Civil protection service head Alta Jean-Baptiste said there were 84 people confirmed dead and 150 injured as of noon. Another civil protection official, Michel Joseph Jr., said he had seen eight more bodies, bringing the count to 92.

"We haven't been able to get them out yet," Joseph said as rescue workers arrived from the United States and the French Caribbean island of Martinique to help the ill-equipped and impoverished country and U.N. peacekeepers posted there search for survivors.

Officials said 700 children were enrolled at the three-story La Promesse school, but it was not known how many were in the building when it caved in on Friday while class was in session.

The disaster struck as the poorest country in the Americas struggled to recover from four tropical storms and hurricanes that killed more than 800 people and destroyed 60 percent of its crops in August and September.

Rescuers worked frantically at the school site on the outskirts of Port-of Prince, the Haitian capital, bringing in a crane to lift blocks of concrete. Firefighters from Virginia and rescue workers from Martinique brought sniffer dogs. The search was set to continue for a second night.

President Rene Preval said the church school had been built with hardly any structural steel or cement to hold its concrete blocks together. Debris crushed neighboring residences in the Nerettes community.

The owner of the school and church, Protestant minister Fortin Augustin, was arrested.

"He told me he built the building all by himself. He said he didn't need an engineer because he had good knowledge of construction," said prosecutor Joseph Manes Louis, adding that Augustin stated he had once worked on construction sites as a foreman.

Preval, who was at the scene on Saturday, said searchers dropped water and biscuits through gaps in the rubble overnight to children and focused their efforts on reaching them.

"Last night we were sure there were still seven children alive. We got one of them but we have lost all signs of the other six being alive," Preval said. "Some say they might be sleeping. Others believe they have died."

As Preval spoke, a rescue worker told him a room full of new victims, mostly students, had been discovered. Officials later said at least 21 bodies were in the room.

At least 35 students, 13 girls and 22 boys, were pulled from the rubble alive overnight.




Via news