15 children die in orphanage fire in Haiti, in a home that was unaccredited to operate

Fifteen children including infants died in Haiti after a fire broke out inside their remote unaccredited orphanage located above the hills of Port-au-Prince.

Two of the children died from burns, Haiti’s Social Affairs Minister Elyse Gelin told the Miami Herald, while 13 others died from smoke inhalation. Two young survivors are being treated for respiratory distress at a hospital in the capital.

In all, there were 61 children living inside the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding’s two-story building at Fermathe 55 when the fire broke out Thursday night, Gelin said. The group home, located just south of Port-au-Prince in the town of Kenscoff, is run by a much-criticized Scranton, Pennsylvania, religious nonprofit.

The incident is strongly being condemned by child protection advocates, and highlights Haiti’s ongoing challenges in trying to regulate non-accredited children’s homes, which are a profitable business in the country despite a 2018 moratorium banning any new orphanages and the closure of nearly 200 in recent years.

Of 754 orphanages that Haiti’s child welfare agency, the Institute of Social Well-Being and Research (IBESR), found last year, only 35 had acceptable standards to house children, officials said. The Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding, which has failed multiple inspections since 2013 when its closure was ordered by the government’s child welfare agency, is not among them, Gelin said.

The Herald was unable to reach anyone at the Orphanage of the Church of Bible Understanding to comment for this story.

Maria Luisa Fornara, UNICEF’s Haiti representative, said officials within Haiti’s cash-strapped child welfare agency “are trying to do as much as they can with the means they have,” to tackle what is clearly a daunting problem.

“There is a huge number of orphanages that IBESR doesn’t even know about because they operate in total anarchy and illegality,” Fornara said. “It’s difficult for them to even identify them. It’s a huge problem.”

Of the ones that are known, it is estimated that they host about 25,800 children. The majority — 80 percent — have at least one parent, Fornara said. “These are not children without parents. Children are in orphanages because of poverty or a specific situation they have been through.”

Fornara said UNICEF has been working closely with Haiti to adopt a policy to de-institutionalize kids and she believes “there is a commitment” to see what kind of social protection system could be put in place to protect children.

In 2019, for example, Haiti began compiling a list of foster families. It has also strengthened its adoption laws to meet international standards and child welfare workers, who have also beefed up teams along the borders to try and thwart child trafficking, are starting to educate parents and families on the dangers of family separation.

“Every child should have a home,” Fornara said. “No child should be in a residential care center. There are studies that have been done that state clearly that for every month a small child spends in an orphanage, he loses between three and four months of development.”

Photos of the group home show the top story gutted by the blaze. Inside one of the rooms crammed with bunk beds, the walls are also stained from the remnants of the fire.

Fornara said when she heard the news about the fire she cried.

“We deplore what happened,” she said of UNICEF. “It is something that never should have happened. This is a tragedy. This is a tragedy for the kids, this is a tragedy for the country.”

The fire began shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday. Multiple agencies including the Office of Civil Protection, firefighters from nearby Petionville and the public-private ambulance company HERO responded to the blaze. Jerry Chandler, the head of the civil protection office, said his team reacted as soon as they got the alert and arrived about 25 minutes later at the remote location of the group home.

“Once they got there, they saw that the building was in flames, but found some good Samaritans that were helping so they cordoned off the site and assisted with the evacuation of victims,” Chandler said.

A firefighter unit from Petionville, he said, arrived minutes after.

“Most of these victims were transported to a nearby hospital that had electricity and oxygen,” Chandler said.

While some of the survivors received care at the Baptist Mission Hospital, which is about two blocks away, others were transported by HERO and public ambulances to other hospitals.

Raymonde Jean Antoine, a justice of the peace who was called to the scene, told Agence France-Presse that two children died in the blaze, and the rest at the hospital. One of the surviving children also told the AFP reporter that the fire ignited because there was no electricity inside the orphanage and the children were using candles to light their rooms.

Civil protection agents reported that when the fire broke out the children rushed upstairs rather than leave the building, and they later became trapped on the upper level of the unsafe building. An individual who was at the scene but asked not to be identified told the Herald that many of the children were small and with disabilities, and there were only a handful of adult staffers. Also, there were no emergency fire exits for the children to escape the building.

Gelin said the Church of Bible Understanding runs two sites in Haiti, which host both boys and girls. One of the sites, which is registered with Haiti’s child welfare agency, is located in Thomassin 32 and cares for babies and young adults. The second site, where the fire broke out, is at Fermathe 55 and is not registered with the state. It mainly hosts disabled children, Gelin said.

Gelin said the Church of Bible Understanding was not authorized to operate any orphanages in Haiti. In 2013 Haiti’s child welfare agency cited the orphanage for “mistreatment and serious negligence” of children in its care and decided to shut it down.

But the facility continued to operate, Gelin said, “because of resistance from [foreigners], pressure from all kinds of employees of the center and summons from a law firm” engaged by the nonprofit.

“They hired a lawyer who summoned the department and the officials and employees did everything they could to keep the center closed, which is a very profitable business,” Gelin said. “Despite the fact that we have been able to close more than 175 centers over the last few years, they grow back like mushrooms and function in secret.”

In 2013, the Associated Press reported on a long-standing series of problems at the Church of Bible Understanding’s homes in Haiti. It reported that members of the religious group sold expensive vintage building fixtures at high-end stores in New York and Los Angeles, and used portions of the profits to fund the two homes.

The nonprofit has operated in Haiti since 1977. According to the Associated Press, in its 2017 tax filing, the most recent available, the organization said “we take in children who are in desperate situations.

“Many of them were very close to death when we took them in.” The nonprofit reported revenue of $6.6 million and expenses of $2.2 million for the year.