• Video
  • Shop
  • Culture
  • Family
  • Wellness
  • Food
  • Living
  • Style
  • Travel
  • News
  • Book Club
  • Newsletter
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your US State Privacy Rights
  • Children's Online Privacy Policy
  • Interest-Based Ads
  • Terms of Use
  • Your Privacy Choices
  • Contact Us
  • Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
  • © 2026 ABC News
  • News

One Year After Haiti's Quake: Cholera Babies, School Without Walls

ByMATT GUTMAN
January 11, 2011, 8:10 PM

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti Jan. 12, 2011— -- In the normally black and white landscape one year after Haiti's catastrophic earthquake, the school pops out. It's name, the Institute Classic de Lalue, is festooned in blues and reds on a banner across the entrance. The latticed school rooms are painted in Caribbean purple and yellow.

The once three-story K-12 school represents both Haiti's promise and it's plight.

"We haven't received a penny from the government," Principal Gellene Charles erupted. "Nothing."

Instead, the schoolchildren's parents chipped in what they could. The school's superintendent Armand Telinor, a man with an urgent manner and an ill-fitting suit, mortgaged his home to scrounge up the rest of the money need for the bank loan.

It was enough to rebuild only part of the school, just a concrete foundation, supporting beams and a roof. The walls in the six classrooms are lattice wood and blankets. There are no windows and on the day ABC News visited the electricity was being installed -- in one room.

The computer lab remains a jumble of rotten screens with cables coiled on top of them.

"We have only started," said Charles. The principal, who wears her hair smoothed back and clips a pen in her blouse, hopes one day air conditioning will be installed so that the computers may be dusted off and turned on.

Like the school, Port au Prince, is busy building. Projects create dust on every street corner. But many, like the school, are privately funded and done piecemeal, often using the same rusted rebar that failed Haitians the first time.

It is estimated about 700 million cubic feet of rubble have yet to be cleared, enough to fill six Superdomes.

Only 10 percent of the rubble has been removed. It is Haiti's biggest challenge, the country's Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerieve told ABC News today.

Bellerieve blamed the international community for its reluctance to fund rubble removal. "It's not sexy. It's very expensive and doesn't hold up like a school or a hospital," he said.

Up Next in News—

Seasonal job hiring at Amazon, UPS, Spirit Halloween surging

October 22, 2026

27-year-old man credited for saving kids, driver in runaway school bus

October 22, 2026

Elizabeth Holmes documentary: What to know, how to watch

October 15, 2026

Crew begins search for Amelia Earhart on remote island

October 14, 2026

Shop GMA Favorites

ABC will receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

Sponsored Content by Taboola

The latest lifestyle and entertainment news and inspiration for how to live your best life - all from Good Morning America.
  • Contests
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your Privacy Choices
  • Children’s Online Privacy Policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Your US State Privacy Rights
  • Interest-Based Ads
  • About Nielsen Measurement
  • Press
  • Feedback
  • Shop FAQs
  • ABC News
  • ABC
  • All Videos
  • All Topics
  • Sitemap
  • Recalls and Product Safety Alerts

© 2026 ABC News
  • Privacy Policy— 
  • Your US State Privacy Rights— 
  • Children's Online Privacy Policy— 
  • Interest-Based Ads— 
  • Terms of Use— 
  • Your Privacy Choices— 
  • Contact Us— 
  • Recalls and Product Safety Alerts— 

© 2026 ABC News