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November 09, 2008 21:39

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Death toll
passes 90 in Haiti school collapse, owner
arrested

Haitian police
arrested the owner of a school that collapsed on
top of classrooms filled with students and
teachers, killing at least 90 people and
launching a desperate search for survivors
trapped in tons of rubble.

Fortin
Augustin, the preacher who owns and built
College La Promesse in suburban Port-au-Prince,
was arrested late Saturday and charged with
involuntary manslaughter, said police spokesman
Garry Desrosier.

Augustin was
being held at a police station in
Haitis capital,
while a U.S.
rescue crew searched overnight for survivors of
Fridays collapse of the three-story building,
which normally holds 500 students and teachers.

Officials told
Reuters 700 children were enrolled at the
three-story La Promesse school, but it was not
known how many were in the building when it
caved in on Friday while class was in
session.

The disaster
struck as the poorest country in the
Americas
struggled to recover from four tropical storms
and hurricanes that killed more than 800 people
and destroyed 60 percent of its crops in August
and September.

Rescuers worked
frantically at the school site on the outskirts
of Port-of Prince, the Haitian capital, bringing
in a crane to lift blocks of concrete.
Firefighters from Virginia and rescue
workers from Martinique brought sniffer
dogs. The search was set to continue for a
second night.

In a rare
moment of joy in a grim task, Haitian rescuers
pulled four children alive Saturday from the
rubble and cradled them in their arms as they
ran toward ambulances, said U.N. police
spokesman Andre Leclerc.

Leclerc said he
did not know the extent of the injuries to the
two girls, ages 3 and 5, and two boys, a
7-year-old and a teenager. 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 was quoted
by AP as saying.

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