15 children dead in Haiti orphanage fire

A fire swept through a Haitian children's home run by a US-based nonprofit group, killing 15 children, healthcare workers said Friday.

Rose-Marie Louis, a childcare worker at the home, told a news agency that about half of those who died were babies or toddlers and the others were roughly 10 or 11 years old in the fire at the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding in the Kenscoff area outside Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.

Louis, who worked at the home, said the fire began around 9pm Thursday (02:00 GMT Friday) and firefighters took about 1.5 hours to arrive. The orphanage had been using candles for light due to problems with its generator and inverter, she said.

“It could have been me,” said Renadin Mondeline, a 22-year-old who lived in the home with her son, now 6, for about two years until she started making enough money as a street vendor to start renting her own place to live last year. “These little girls inside were just like my baby.”

Rescue workers arrived at the scene on motorcycles and did not have bottled oxygen or the ambulances needed to transport the children to the hospital, said Jean-Francois Robenty, a civil protection official.

"They could have been saved," he said. ″We didn't have the equipment to save their lives."

Late Friday afternoon, police raided another home also run by the Church of Bible Understanding and took away several dozen children in a bus over protests from employees.

The Associated Press has reported on a long-standing series of problems at two children's homes run by the Church of Bible Understanding.

Source: Agencies

 

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