Update #2: According to a UPI report on Saturday, two children have been rescued alive. However, the official death toll has grown to eighty and counting.Update #1: As of Friday night the AP is reporting at least thirty dead though AFP cites a government official who claims that the death toll is fifty.
Original Post: In a developing news story, at least ten people have died when a school collapsed near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Red Cross workers, U.N. troops, and others rushed to the school which on a normal day holds hundreds of students. “Students lay crushed under blocks of concrete while crying and screaming parents tried to find their children” reported Reuters while BBC News mentioned the following:
A Haitian Red Cross worker, Michaele Gedeon, described a scene of horror for CNN television:It’s unknown what caused the school to fall this morning though Haiti’s infrastructure has been hit hard by a series of recent tropical storms.
"The whole school collapsed on the kids, and you know on the phone you can hear so many, so many children, you know, crying, crying. And saying, 'This one is dead, that one is dead'.
"It's a school building that collapsed on the children. They were in their classrooms."
Image- BBC News
Sources- The Latin Americanist, Reuters, Canadian Press, BBC News
Thank you for covering this story. We are all so excited about the election of Obama that this tragedy has slipped through the cracks. The children and their parents are in our prayers.
ReplyDeleteMother Mimi
St. Joseph, MO
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ReplyDeleteThis story is tragic on so many levels. In a country where nearly half of all school-aged children are out of school, there is no need for yet another incentive for them to stay out.
ReplyDeleteIt also appears that later estimates show at least 30 children were killed: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/07/world/main4582159.shtml?tag=topHome;topStories