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Owner of school that collapsed in Haiti arrested

Rescue workers search for survivors in the La Promesse school after it collapsed in Petionville, Haiti, on Saturday. The school, where about 500 students crowded into several floors, collapsed on Friday during classes, killing at least 88 people and injuring many more. PHOTO: AP

Haitian police arrested the owner of a school that collapsed on top of classrooms filled with students and teachers, killing at least 88 and launching a desperate search for survivors trapped in tons of rubble.

Fortin Augustin, the preacher who owns and built College La Promesse in suburban Port-au-Prince, was arrested late on Saturday and charged with involuntary manslaughter, police spokesman Garry Desrosier said.

Augustin was being held at a police station in the Haitian capital, while a US rescue crew searched overnight for survivors of Friday’s collapse of the three-story building, which normally holds 500 students and teachers.

In a rare moment of joy in a grim task, Haitian rescuers pulled four children alive on Saturday from the rubble and cradled them in their arms as they ran toward ambulances, UN police spokesman Andre Leclerc said.

Leclerc said he did not know the extent of the injuries to the two girls, ages three and five, and two boys, a seven-year-old and a teenager.

But he added the three-year-old had a cut on her head and seemed to be OK.

Nadia Lochard, civil protection coordinator for the western region that includes Petionville, said the death toll rose to 84 on Saturday, with 150 others injured and many more still missing.

Later, US rescuers using digital cameras on long poles to look under the rubble found six or seven bodies, but think that two of them were already included in Lochard’s death toll, said Evan Lewis, a member of the team from Fairfax County, Virginia.

In the two days of rescues, parents clutched pictures of their children as they watched rescue workers sidestep human limbs sticking out from the rubble. Riot police chased away several Haitians who found their way past police barriers and tried to excavate the site themselves.

About 500 students typically crowded into the hillside school, which had been holding a party the day of the collapse, exempting students from wearing uniforms and complicating efforts to identify their bodies, Lochard said.

Thousands of Haitians cheered and shouted directions as trucks carried medical supplies down the mountain road on Saturday.

By nightfall, hundreds stood in the shadows across a ravine behind the collapsed school watching rescuers pick through the rubble amid floodlights.

Angelique Toussaint kept vigil on a rooftop overlooking the rubble on Saturday and prayed that her 13-year-old granddaughter, Velouna, would be saved. Her three other grandchildren were found alive on Friday, and one granddaughter underwent an operation for a severely broken leg.

Dressed in her white church clothes, the 55-year-old Roman Catholic said she had attended a group prayer for missing children.

Velouna’s parents had gone home, exhausted from the oppressive heat and endless waiting as rescuers struggled to work around a hanging concrete slab that could not be safely removed.

“I think they’re doing a good job. It’s a little slow, but I’m relieved all these people are helping,” Toussaint said.

Local authorities used their bare hands to pull bleeding students from the wreckage before heavy equipment and international teams arrived late on Friday and Saturday to help, including some 38 search-and-rescue officials and four rescue dogs from Virginia.
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