Nov 8, 2008 12:03 pm US/Eastern
Haiti School Crumbles, At Least 75 People Are Dead
Hundreds Of Students Were Inside Collège La Promesse Evangelique, A Hillside School Operated By A Church, When It Collapsed
PETIONVILLE, Haiti (CBS4) ―
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Rescue workers carry a victim of the College Promesse Evangelique school collapse on Nov. 7, 2008, in Petion-ville, Haiti.
Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images
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Rescue workers carry a victim of the College Promesse Evangelique school collapse on Nov. 7, 2008, in Petion-ville, Haiti.
Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images
A school building collapsed during classes on Friday, killing at least 75 people and injuring many more. Rescuers worked furiously on Saturday to pull children from the wreckage and give water to those still stuck in the rubble.
More children were believed buried in the rubble and rescuers used bare hands and hand tools to get to them.
An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of five children and two women, as well as dozens of injured students, some with bleeding heads, pulled from the collapsed building.
Matt Marek, head of programs for the American Red Cross in Haiti, said he thought the death toll will go much higher.
"This is going to be an all-day affair," he said.
Roughly 500 students from kindergarten through high school attend the school in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Petionville Mayor Claire Rudie Parent told the AP. She said she did not know how many were inside at the time of the late-morning collapse.
As rescuers carried the injured from the rubble of the concrete building, a swelling crowd erupted with wails and prayers.
"My child, my child," one mother yelled.
"There are no words for this," the mayor said as the hundreds of bystanders and rescue workers searched for survivors.
United Nations peacekeepers and Haitian police tried to clear a path through the onlookers so that three battalions of military engineers from Brazil, Chile and Ecuador could assist in the rescue.
U.N. military commander Maj. Gen. Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz said he had to park a kilometer (about a half-mile) away and walk to the wrecked school because he couldn't get by the crowd.
Parent said she suspected a structural defect caused the second story of the La Promesse school to collapse onto the first. The mayor said she doubted recent rains contributed to the collapse.
Volunteers arrived with shovels and axes and said they were going to try to deliver water to anybody who was trapped under the rubble. Other people shouted prayers as emergency vehicles raced up a winding hill to the school.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has been struggling to recover from a chaotic year that has included widespread riots over rising food prices and a string of hurricanes and tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people.
The U.N. peacekeepers were sent to Haiti following the bloody ouster of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and have boosted security by fighting gangs and helping develop local police.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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