4 Kids Rescued From Haitian School Rubble

Toll Of Children, Teachers Killed In Building Collapse Nearly 90; Building's Owner Arrested

(CBS/AP)  Rescuers pulled four children alive Saturday from the rubble of a three-story Haitian school that collapsed on classrooms filled with students and teachers, killing at least 88 people.

Emergency workers cradled the dazed children in their arms and rushed them to ambulances, U.N. police spokesman Andre Leclerc said. The extent of the injuries to the two girls, ages 3 and 5, and two boys, a 7-year-old and a teenager, was not known, Leclerc said. But he added the 3-year-old had a cut on her head and seemed to be OK.

"She was talking and drinking juice," Leclerc said.

Haitian police also announced Saturday that they have arrested the owner of a school. Police spokesman Garry Desrosier says Fortin Augustin, the preacher who owns and built College La Promesse, was arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Augustin is being held at a police station in Port-au-Prince. It was not immediately clear how many counts he faces or when he is expected to stand trial.

Search teams from the United States and France on Saturday joined the hunt for survivors in the remains of the College La Promesse in suburban Port-au-Prince, which tumbled to the ground Friday morning while students from kindergarten to high school age were going to class, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella.

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 possibly hundreds still underneath the massive pile of concrete, reports Cobiella.

Later, U.S. 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.

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 had found their way around the yellow tape and began excavating themselves.

Roughly 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 oxygen and medical supplies up the mountainside all day Saturday. By nightfall, hundreds stood in the shadows across a ravine behind the collapsed school watching rescuers pick through the rubble amid floodlights.

Doctors Without Borders was treating more than 80 people, many with serious injuries, said Francois Servranckx, a spokesman for the group.

Angelique Toussaint meanwhile kept vigil on a rooftop overlooking the rubble 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 move the massive concrete slabs that remained.

"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 Friday and Saturday to help, including some 38 search-and-rescue officials and four rescue dogs from Virginia. France also sent a team of 15 firefighters and doctors from the nearby island of Martinique.

"These guys are the real experts," said Alexandre Deprez, acting director for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Haiti, which flew in the U.S. rescuers. "We've done everything we've possibly can."

Neighbors told French rescuers they'd heard children's voices under the rubble on Friday night and tried to pass them some cookies. But at that moment, the teetering ruins shifted and crashed down, silencing their cries, said Daniel Vigee, head of the French rescue team.

And as they readied to work through the night on Saturday, U.S. rescuers only heard silence, said Capt. Michael Istvan, operations chief for the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue team.

President Rene Preval, who has visited the concrete school three times since its collapse, said poor construction and a lack of steel reinforcements were to blame and warned that structures throughout Haiti run a similar risk.

"It's not just schools, it's where people live, it's churches," Preval he told The Associated Press as crews picked through the wreckage.

A previous mayor of Petionville had in fact tried to halt the school's expansion citing safety concerns, Preval said.

"We have got to have a consistent policy that when one administration leaves office the next continues its work," he said. "The next time the mayor speaks and the authorities speak, people will listen."

Parents said they had toiled endlessly to afford the school's $1,500 tuition in hopes of empowering their children to someday escape poverty in the capital's hillside suburb.

Haiti, the poorest and most politically tumultuous country in the Western Hemisphere, has struggled this year to recover from riots over rising food prices and a string of hurricanes and tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people.

[kemetorigin]

The families of those who lost children and those of injured children are in my thoughts. Nothing could possibly be as horrible as losing a child. Poor babies were just in school, and had the horrible misfortune of being in a poorly constructed building.

[rhs648]

correction

Unfortunately poor standard construction work seems to be endemic on a world wide basis. doesn''''''''t help when these industry''''''''s are self regulatory!

Hope the survivors pull through ok.

Posted by zwaggsy

Is it that or do public officials take bribes to look the other way or give approval to substandard construction. All of the laws and rules are meaningless unless those charged with enforcing them do so.

[rhs648]

Unfortunately poor standard construction work seems to be endemic on a world wide basis. doesn''''t help when these industry''''s are self regulatory!

Hope the survivors pull through ok.

Is it that or do public officials take bribes to look the other way or give approval to substandard construction. All of the laws and rules are meaningless unless those charged with enforcing them do so.

Posted by zwaggsy

[groliesgirl]

What a tragedy and probably a preventable one at that. All those poor unsuspecting children. Oh and pirmin3, we all hope you won''t be breeding anytime soon.

[fush2]

its not like the government gives a rats butt...i feel so sorry for these people i mean they have been eating mud cuz they cant afford food..now why dont we find out what the government officials are eating...lol i just remmebered something they eat cats and dogs....so how can they be eating mud??? idk watever

[zwaggsy]

Unfortunately poor standard construction work seems to be endemic on a world wide basis. doesn''t help when these industry''s are self regulatory!

Hope the survivors pull through ok.

[credibility2]

How tragic. This same school collapsed a number of years ago and was rebuilt, presumably to whatever standards the Haitian government has in place. It appears that the rebuild was of shoddy construction. Several months ago a similar situation in China occurred. Even in our own nation, Hurricane Andrew caused extreme damage and much of it was due to the use of shoddy and sub-standard and coded building materials. I think any architect, builder or supplier who deliberately takes short cuts to maximize their profit needs to be given the death penalty. Humans should not have to suffer or die because of the greed of another.