PETIONVILLE, Haiti — 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. Police arrested the school’s owner and charged him with involuntary manslaughter.
Emergency workers cradled the dazed children in their arms and rushed them into ambulances Saturday morning, said U.N. police spokesman Andre Leclerc. 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.
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 a day earlier. Thousands of Haitians cheered and shouted directions to rescuers. Trucks carrying oxygen and other medical supplies rumbled up the mountainside.
Nadia Lochard, civil protection coordinator for the western region that includes Petionville, said that the death toll had risen to 84 and that another 150 people were injured in the collapse.
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, Va.
Roughly 500 children and teenagers typically crowd into Petionville’s three-story school building. .
President Rene Preval said poor construction caused the collapse.
Police spokesman Garry Desrosier said Fortin Augustin, the preacher who owns and built College La Promesse, was arrested Saturday.
It was not immediately clear how many counts of involuntary manslaughter he faces or when he is expected to stand trial.
