2008 Pétion-Ville school collapse

Building collapse in Port-au-Prince, Haiti 2008 Pétion-Ville school collapse Haiti yes center Pétion-Ville 18 31 N 72 17 W Location of Pétion-Ville within Haiti Friday, 2008 11 07 10:00 am EST Pétion-Ville, Haiti 18.516 -72.283 region:HT_type:edu inline,title 94 150+ The Pétion-Ville school collapse occurred on November 7, 2008, in Pétion-Ville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, when the church-operated Collège La Promesse Évangélique ("The Evangelical Promise School")https://archive.today/20120711143621/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/09/content_10329992.htm news.xinhuanet.com, Death toll in Haitian school collapse rises to 92 collapsed at around 10:00 a.m.http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_imjKUfz61aWKiTjo3DgsF6gskA 50 dead in Haitian grade-school collapse 2008-11-08 AFP 2008-11-08 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20110520185713/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_imjKUfz61aWKiTjo3DgsF6gskA 2011-05-20 local time (15:00 GMT). About 700 students from kindergarten through high school attended the school; however, it is unclear how many were in the three-story building when it collapsed.http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hHOomf3U8hUR7ep44gyz4xKgtuOQD94AE87G0 Death toll in Haiti school collapse rises to 30 Katz Jonathan M. 2008-11-07 AP 2008-11-08July 2010 At least 93 people, mostly children, were confirmed killed, and over 150 injured.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/09/haiti-school-collapse-disaster Haiti school collapse: 200 feared missing The Observer 2008-11-09 London Peter Beaumont 2008-11-09 At least 35 students, 13 girls and 22 boys, were rescued from the rubble alive on November 8.www.reuters.com, Death toll passes 90 in Haiti school collapse Collapse During the collapse, the first floor of the school buckled under, and the second and third floors of the building came down upon it. The collapse also destroyed several nearby homes.https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7716516.stm Deadly school collapse in Haiti 2008-11-08 BBC 2008-11-08http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hgnHaEEMVynAbrKsBGQUkNpb4EAw 84 killed, 150 injured in Haitian school collapse 2008-11-09 Associated Press 2008-11-09 dead https://web.archive.org/web/20110520185747/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hgnHaEEMVynAbrKsBGQUkNpb4EAw 2011-05-20 However, only the first and second floors were filled with students, and some students were in the playground area.http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/07/haiti.school.collapse/ Rescue continues into the night after Haiti school collapses 2008-11-08 CNN 2008-11-08 The cause of the collapse remains officially unstated, but residents of the town have said they suspect poor-quality construction as a cause. The school had previously experienced a partial collapse in 2000, but it was rebuilt. After the first collapse, neighbors living downhill from the school abandoned their property out of fear that the building would fall onto their homes. The owner of the church-run school attempted to buy these vacated properties. In addition, the third floor of the building was under construction at the time of the 2008 collapse.Katz Jonathan 2008-11-07 Associated Press Death toll in Haiti school collapse rises to 30 http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hHOomf3U8hUR7ep44gyz4xKgtuOQD94ABHMO0 2008-11-07July 2010 After the collapse, at least 200 people were seen at hospitals in and around Port-au-Prince. However, because of strikes at General Hospital and Hospital de la Paix,edition.cnn.com, Death toll climbs as search continues in Haiti collapse two hospitals in the town, Trinité Hospital and University of Haiti Hospital saw most of the injured. Arrest College La Promesse school owner, Rev. Fortin Augustin, Protestant minister and preacher, was arrested on November 8, 2008. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter and brought to a Haitian police station, canadianpress.google.com, Owner of collapsed Haiti school arrestedJuly 2010 after he allegedly told Haitian president René Préval that "the church school had been built with hardly any structural steel or cement to hold its concrete blocks together; he constructed the building all by himself, saying he didn't need an engineer as he had good knowledge of construction." He claimed to have the knowledge of construction and the word of God with him. Everywhere he went he had always tried to spread it, teaching people that the way that they are supposed to get through life is with the word of God in their hearts because that's really the only thing that can save when you are in a situation you can't get out of.http://www.macaunews.net/story/427823 macaunews.net, Haiti school owner in custody 2008-11-09 https://web.archive.org/web/20090104143040/http://www.macaunews.net/story/427823 2009-01-04 dead Reaction and rescue operations Haiti's neighbor, the Dominican Republic, sent two helicopters to assist in evacuating the injured. United Nations peacekeepers, stationed in the country since the 2004 coup d'état, assisted in the rescue efforts, as did members of the aid group Doctors Without Borders and the International Red Cross.50 dead in Haitian grade-school collapse Agence France-Presse 2008-11-08 2008-11-08 http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_imjKUfz61aWKiTjo3DgsF6gskA dead https://web.archive.org/web/20110520185713/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_imjKUfz61aWKiTjo3DgsF6gskA 2011-05-20 The U.S. Agency for International Development sent a disaster response team to the school, and provided more logistical and rescue equipment.http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/USAID-Responds-Immediately-Haitian-School/story.aspx?guid=%7B997A3A3F-014B-4796-8834-E3BD6DD65D91%7D USAID Responds Immediately to Haitian School Collapse 2008-11-07 Wall Street Journal 2008-11-08 This consists of some 38 Virginia search-and-rescue officials and four rescue dogs, (led by Capt. Michael Istvan, operations chief for the Fairfax County Urban Search and Rescue team, flown by Alexandre Deprez, acting director for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Haiti). Also, a team of 15 Martinique firefighters and doctors, led by Daniel Vigee, and groups from Médecins sans Frontières and Haiti arrived to rescue the remaining trapped children. Hilario Davide, Jr. reported that “Filipino Blue Berets were the first to arrive at the scene on November 7 and immediately went to action, using their bare hands to roll over concrete slabs and dig through the rubble in their bid to pull out both the living and the dead. 157 officers and enlisted personnel from the Philippine Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as 13 other officers from the Philippine National Police, are serving with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The Filipinos were instrumental in the recovery of 9 victims who survived the tragedy.” The Filipino peace-keepers worked with blue helmets from Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador and Haitian police.gmanews.tv/story, RP troops helping in rescue work in Haiti building collapse Related incidents Only five days after the Pétion-Ville school disaster, portions of Grace Divine School in Port-au-Prince also collapsed.http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/12/haiti.school/index.html Second school collapses in Haiti 2008-12-08 CNN 2008-12-08 Further reading The school collapse is recounted in the prologue of Jonathan M. Katz's The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 978-0230341876 References Dozens dead after school collapses in Haiti Category:2008 in Haiti Category:Man-made disasters in Haiti Category:Disasters in schools Category:Building and structure collapses in 2008 Category:21st century in Port-au-Prince Category:Pétion-Ville Category:November 2008 in North America