From her front porch, Janita Geneus has a clear view of the collapsed school where her daughter was crushed to death along with at least 93 of her classmates and teachers. But she has not looked at the wreckage even once.
The 48-year-old mother has barely moved from a thin mattress in her living room since the concrete school collapsed during a party on Friday. She is often unable to speak and refuses to join the thousands of others who watch rescuers scour the rubble for victims.
The searchers announced on Monday they did not expect to find more survivors.
Geneus was at church on Friday when her husband rushed up the street on a motorcycle to tell her the College La Promesse had collapsed with three of their five children inside.
The hillside slum of Nerette, a maze of precarious buildings below the wealthy Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville, has been gripped by panic and mourning since the disaster.
More than 150 people were badly injured and two houses behind the school were destroyed.
Neighbors had long complained the school was unsafe, and people living nearby have been trying to sell their homes since part of it tumbled down eight years ago.
Friends and family in white funeral clothes descend a staircase built into the steep hillside to visit the second-story concrete home where Geneus and her husband have lived for 21 years. Some carry limes to ward off the smell of corpses still trapped in the rubble.
Thousands of onlookers scrutinized the rescuers’ every move from balconies around the ravine where Nerette is perched, and frustration boiled over after long stretches where nobody could be seen working on the pile.
About 100 Haitians stormed and were driven off the site, then threw rocks at police and UN peacekeepers on Sunday afternoon demanding they be allowed to help speed up the rescue process.
The government has pledged to pay for funerals and compensate families of the victims, said Steven Benoit, who represents Petionville in Haiti’s Chamber of Deputies.
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