United Nations Radio

It's been three days since the deadly collapse of a school in a suburb of Haiti's capital, Port au Prince. Soldiers and police from the UN mission in the country, known as MINUSTAH, are helping in the recovery effort. Earlier today I interviewed the mission's spokesperson Sophie Boutaud-de la Combe for an update.

SOPHIE:We are continuing to support the national authorities to search the collapsed school. What we can say is right now the official numbers are 92 deceased and 150 injured. Yesterday, 42 children were sent back home after getting their medical clearance, which is also good news.

DIANNE:Is there any indication as to what caused the school to collapse?

SOPHIE:We cannot answer this for sure right now. An investigation has been opened, and the director of the school has been arrested and is currently interrogated.

DIANNE:Sophie, I don't know if you can tell us about this school. It's called La Promesse College. Is it a school for small children, or is it a university? How big is the building? How many students attended? That sort of thing.

SOPHIE:Okay. The school is from the lower level of children, like three years old, to those who are 20 and more. But hopefully the day the school collapsed, we had not all the children in there. The school is built for up to 700 children, but perhaps we had not more than 250 people there: not just children, but also families, because it was not a normal day of school, it was like a special event. And for this special event, they had families invited with children, so that's why we had also a lot of adults in this school.

DIANNE:The "blue helmets," that is the soldiers and police assigned to the UN Mission in Haiti, they have been assisting with the recovery and relief efforts. Can you just tell us exactly what they did?

SOPHIE:The UN policemen of MINUSTAH are continuing to provide the crowd control which is indispensable in view of the large numbers of people who are still gathering at the site and who could impede the ongoing emergency operation. So we are supporting the national police to secure the work of the rescue team on site. And also the MINUSTAH military doctors are helping the Red Cross to provide medical care to the evacuated injured. We have over UN policemen from MINUSTAH involved to secure and facilitate the work of the rescue team arrived on site during the night of Friday to Saturday for the French team, and on Saturday morning for the Americans. The special teams who arrived from France and the US are civil protection special teams. The French arrived with dogs (that) are trained to rescue people trapped in such collapse. And for the Americans, they have special equipment also to search for survivors. They had done an amazing job on site, and MINUSTAH doctors--the military doctors of MINUSTAH--are helping to give medical care. This is a different thing: this is after those who have been evacuated from the site

DIANNE:Now of course this collapse follows on the heels of the recent series of hurricanes and storms that Haiti had. And of course with the ongoing food crisis and the fact that Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, it just seems like Haiti cannot get a break.

SOPHIE:That's true that the situation now is very difficult in this context. But the UN agencies are working to coordinate the humanitarian assistance in collaboration with bi-lateral donors as well as national and international non-governmental organizations to help this situation in this emergency situation, but also with the hurricanes and the emergency situation.

PRES:Sophie Boutaud-de la Combe is spokesperson at the UN mission in Haiti.

Producer: Dianne Penn

(duration: 3'49")