Rescuers Use Bare Hands to Pull Students From Wreckage of Haitian School Collapse

My thoughts and prayers go out to Haiti and the latest devastation they are being faced with. A school in Petionville, Haiti, where roughly 500 students are enrolled collapsed during classes yesterday. The death toll has risen to 84, with scores of others missing.

According to media reports, neighbors suspected the building was poorly rebuilt after it partially collapsed eight years ago. Jimmy Germain, a French teacher at the school, said people who lived just downhill abandoned their land out of fear that the building would tumble onto them, and that the school's owner tried to buy up their vacated properties.

Police commissioner Francene Moreau said the minister who runs the church-operated school could face criminal charges. This person should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, especially if he knowingly put the lives of the students and teachers at risk by failing to correct the structural defects in the building.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and has been struggling to recover from widespread riots over rising food prices, a string of hurricanes and tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people.