PORTERSVILLE — A Portersville doctor hopes to make another trip to tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka at the end of February to deliver money collected through the Portersville-Prospect Rotary Club.

Dr. Gordon Fletcher, a retired physician, and Omer Hertweck, both of Portersville, have traveled to that country three times through the Rotary Club.

Three years ago, the men visited the town of Galle to deliver money to help build a school there.

Galle, on the southern tip of the country, was perhaps the hardest hit town in Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit the tiny island Dec. 26. The school was destroyed.

Now Fletcher hopes to raise $50,000 to deliver to Galle to help rebuild the school.

“Several hundred children attended the school,” Fletcher said. He is unsure if any students were hurt or killed in the disaster.

The death toll from the tsunami is above 160,000.

Brittany Derr, 19, who grew up in Prospect, hopes to accompany Fletcher when he leaves at the end of next month.

“She hopes to spend a couple of months out there to help them rebuild,” said Obie Derr, Brittany’s father and manager of Moraine State Park. “She has her passport and is trying to raise money so she can go along.”

Derr said his daughter, who has spent a couple of summers helping build structures in Mexico, hopes to find Rotary members in Sri Lanka who she can stay with while she is there to help in the relief effort.

Fletcher said he hopes to collect $50,000 as part of the fund-raising efforts of Rotary clubs in Butler County. This money would be in addition to the $100,000 that Rotary clubs in the county are trying to collect by the end of January for disaster relief for tsunami victims.

“My goal is to raise the money and help re-establish the school,” Fletcher said. “It is an excellent school run by a Catholic Jesuit priest that has really made a difference.”

Hertweck said the school’s student body consists mostly of young people between the ages of 16 and 18 who are taught such skills as automobile and appliance repair and electrical wiring.

Fletcher said donations for the school are being coordinated through the Butler Rotary Foundation.

Checks should be made out to the Butler Rotary Foundation and sent to P.O. Box 1081, Butler, PA 16003.