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Dozens Die As School Collapses During Classes

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 8, 2008

PETIONVILLE - A hillside school where roughly 500 students crowded into several floors collapsed during classes on Friday, killing at least 30 people and injuring many more. Rescuers used bare hands to pull bleeding students from the wreckage.

More children were thought buried in the rubble of the concrete building, and the death toll was likely to rise.

The concrete building's third story was still under construction, and Petionville Mayor Claire Rudie Parent told The Associated Press she suspects a structural defect caused the collapse, not the recent rains.
Police commissioner Francene Moreau says the preacher who runs the church-operated school could face criminal charges.

Parent said roughly 500 students from kindergarten through high school attend the school, College La Promesse, in the hills above Port-au-Prince. She did not know how many were inside when it collapsed.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders pulled out 85 people, half with life-threatening injuries, said Max Cosci, the group's director in Haiti. Volunteers arrived with shovels and axes and said they would try to deliver water to people trapped inside.

"This is going to be an all-day affair," Red Cross official Matt Marek said.

The Associated Press

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