The Daily Collegian
Haitian kids face uncertain future
By David Crary
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Six months after a chaotic airlift
to the United States, 12 Haitian
children remain in a Roman
Catholic institution near
Pittsburgh, their fate in limbo
while U.S. and Haitian authorities
struggle to determine which
nation should be their future
home.
Their case is complicated and
politically sensitive, and all parties
say they want the best outcome
possible for the children. Yet impa
tience in some quarters is grow
ing.
“It’s astounding to me that the
bureaucracy can’t get this done,”
said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed
Rendell, who took part in the air
lift. “It’s unfair to these children.
Let’s get them adopted by loving
families.”
Unlike some 1,100 other chil
dren flown out of Haiti to the U.S.
after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the
youths at the Holy Family
Institute in Emsworth, Pa., were
not part of the adoption process
prior to the quake and accord
ing to some legal experts
shouldn’t have been eligible for
the emergency program.
There are American families
eager to adopt them now, includ
ing some who've been screened
and approved by adoption agen
cies. But there’s been little in the
way of public updates on the case
as federal agencies, the Haitian
government and the International
Red Cross try to determine
whether the 12 should be put up
for U.S. adoption or returned to
relatives in Haiti.
The State Department, which
oversees various aspects of inter
national adoption, is deeply
involved in case but has not
Gas well
employer
had past
violations
By Joe Mandak
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
PITTSBURGH The employ
er of two workers killed in an oil
and gas well explosion last week
had paid nearly $lO,OOO in federal
workplace safety fines for two
other well fires, including a 2007
explosion that burned an employ
ee, records show.
Officials at Northeast Energy
Management Inc. of Indiana. Pa.,
did not immediately return a call
for comment Tuesday about the
federal Occupational Safety and
Health Administration records.
The explosion and fire Friday
was the third since September
2007 involving Northeast Energy
Management workers at a west
ern Pennsylvania well. OSHA
spokeswoman Lenore Uddyback-
Fortson confirmed.
Huntley & Huntley Inc. of
Monroeville, the drilling company
that owned the well, has a clean
OSHA record, Uddyback-Fortson
said.
Northeast Management was
cited for 10 serious violations, and
one other violation after the
September 2007 explosion and fire
at a well near Sligo in Clarion
County, OSHA records show.
Workers at a natural gas well
“were exposed to an unsafe air
mixture environment resulting in
an explosion and fire causing
injuries," OSHA said.
A piece of equipment called the
f Ple.iseopplyatwwwdantesinc.com 11
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issued statements about it. Two
staffers authorized by the
department to brief a reporter
only if they not be identified
described the case as very com
plex and said there was no time
frame for resolving it as efforts
continue to verify information
about the children's families in
Haiti.
They said no decisions would be
made that were not acceptable to
the Haitian government, which
has been wary of some post-quake
efforts to send children abroad. In
May, the leader of an Idaho church
group was convicted of arranging
illegal travel after the group tried
to take children out of Haiti with
out government approval.
The 12 children at Holy Family
were part of an airlift of 54 chil
dren from the Bresma orphanage
in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince,
where two Pittsburgh-area sis
ters, Jamie and Alison McMutrie,
had been volunteering for several
years. The sisters' urgent post
quake pleas for help were heeded
participants in the Jan. 19 airlift
included Rendell, officials from
the University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center, and a local
Democratic congressman. Rep.
Jason Altmire.
At Holy Family, the 12 children
have been shielded from public
view, and from the media, since
their arrival, but by all accounts
are receiving excellent treatment.
They experienced their first snow
fall during the winter, made field
trips to Pittsburgh's zoo and chil
dren's museum, and have enjoyed
the swimming pool during recent
hot weather.
"The children had typical reac
tions to being whisked out of their
country.... We had bed-wetting and
tantrums," said Sister Linda
Yankoski, the institute’s president.
The July 23 natural gas well explosion left two workers dead
blowout preventer had been
removed, causing the well to spew
natural gas for two hours before
an attempt was made to cap the
well, the records show.
OSHA proposed $12,442 in fines,
and Northeast Energy eventually
paid $5,965 to settle seven of the 10
serious violations, records show.
In November 2008, the company
was fined $4,000 for a drilling rig
fire in Charleroi in Washington
Countv.
"No employees were injured,
and we cited them for electrical
wiring and equipment that was
not approved for hazardous loca
tions," Uddyback-Fortson said.
OSHA and other investigators
have yet to determine the cause of
Friday's explosion in Indiana
Township that killed Northeast
Energy employees Andy Yosurak
Jr., 56. of Creekside, and Kevin
Henry, 46, of New Florence.
It is known that at least one of
the workers was welding an oil
tank at the shallow oil and natural
gas well when the tank exploded
and set the well on fire, according
to Helen Humphreys, a spokes
woman for the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental
Protection.
The tank rocketed 70 yards
John Heller/Associated Press
Orphaned Haitian children arrive at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh following the earthquake in January.
'We re not seeing that now.
They appear to be very well
adjusted. "
Ranging in age from 15 months
to nearly 13, the children have
been living together in their own
residence, kept apart from the
dozens of troubled youths who
make up the institute's regular
population.
The staff has been supplement
ed with Creole-speaking volun
teers.
In hindsight, it's clear that
including the 12 children in the air
lift has created a long-running
dilemma. Yet federal and state
officials have defended the deci
sion not to leave them behind in
the confusion at the Port-au-
Prince airpor t saying the alter
native’ would have been to send
them back to an understaffed,
away, and the workers were badly
burned and hurled dozens of feet
by the blast, investigators have
They've yet to pinpoint the
cause of the explosion.
lIEP Secretary John Hanger
said he hopes the agency will
report on the cause of the blast
within 45 davs.
The law gives OSHA six months
to do that, Uddyback-Fortson said.
Huntley President Keith
Mangini defended Northeast
Energy.
"We've used them frequently,
and we believe they've been a
good company We continue to
believe they're a good company”
Mangini said Tuesday adding that
Huntley expects to issue a state
ment about the subcontractor.
The Allegheny County Medical
Examiner has yet to release the
cause of death on the two workers,
saying that is pending the out
come of investigations into the
explosion's cause.
The well is in Indiana Township
in Allegheny County, about 15
miles northeast of Pittsburgh.
Northeast Energy compnay is
based in the Indiana borough,
about 45 miles northeast of
Pittsburgh in Indiana County.
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When it became clear that the
12 children were not part of the
U.S. adoption process, an adoption
service provider affiliated with the
Bresma orphanage compiled a list
of qualified U.S. families willing to
adopt them.
Among them were Chad and
Sherry Cluver of Forsyth, 111.,
who’d been contemplating adopt
ing from Haiti long before the
earthquake.
The Cluvers both high school
teachers flew to Pittsburgh on
Jan. 21 to meet briefly with two of
the 12 children who, later that day,
were moved to the Holy Family
Institute.
Since then, according to Sherry
Cluver, she and her husband have
been prohibited from further visits
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Pa. one of 18 states
competing for grants
By Christine Armario
and Dorie Turner
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
ATLANTA Eighteen states
and the District of Columbia
were named finalists Tuesday in
the second round of the federal
“Race to the Top” school reform
grant competition, giving them a
chance to receive a share of $3.4
billion.
The states are Arizona,
California, Colorado, Florida,
Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Jersey,
New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and
South Carolina.
The competition rewards
ambitious reforms aimed at
improving struggling schools
and closing the achievement
gap.
Dozens of states have passed
new education policies to foster
charter school growth and modi
fy teachers evaluations, hoping
to make themselves more
attractive to the judges.
In a speech announcing the
finalists at the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C.,
Tuesday, Education Secretary
Arne Duncan said a “quiet revo
lution" of education reform is
faking place across the country.
“It’s being driven by great
educators and administrators
who are challenging the
defeatism and inertia that has
trapped generations of children
in second-rate schools,” Duncan
said.
Thirty-five states and the
District of Columbia applied dur-
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or any other contact with the chil
dren, and the last update they got
from any federal official was June
15.
“We’re here, praying for you,
loving you, and writing and calling
important people for help to
bring you home,” Culver wrote in
a recent blog entry, addressing the
children even though they were
unlikely to read it.
“We pray that your hearts might
somehow know that we have not
left you behind.”
Among those Cluver has con
tacted is her congressman, Aaron
Shock, R-111. His spokesman, Dave
Natonski, said Shock plans to
write to Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius inquiring about the sta
tus of the case and the welfare of
the 12 children.
ing the second round of the com
petition so that they could
advance.
Applications were screened
by a panel of peer reviewers, and
finalists will travel to
Washington in coming weeks to
present their proposals. The
department expects 10 to 15
states will ultimately receive
money, depending on whether
large or small states win.
“Just as in the first round,
we’re going to set a very high bar
because we know that real and
meaningful change will only
come from doing hard work and
setting high expectations,”
Duncan said.
All finalists scored higher than
400 points out of a possible 500
points in the initial evaluation.
Duncan said the average score
rose by 26 points between the
first and second rounds.
In the past 18 months, 13
states have altered laws to foster
the growth of charter schools,
and 17 have reformed teacher
evaluation systems to include
student achievement, among
other things.
New York, a finalist in the first
round that did not win money,
lifted its cap on the number of
charter schools that can open
from 200 to 460.
Colorado passed laws that
would pay teachers based on
student performance and can
strip tenure from low-perform
ing instructors.
Georgia, a current finalist, did
n’t change any laws to its system
but already had one of the most
open charter policies in the
country.
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