Cedar Rapids native says children accounted for after Haiti earthquake

A Cedar Rapids native living and working in Fermathe and Petitionville, Haiti said today that all of the children she works with at Wings of Hope and St. Joseph's Home for Boys have been accounted for following Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Cedar Rapids native Renee Dietrich says two people – the director of St. Joseph's in Petionville, and one of the residents there – were injured in the quake and have been taken to the hospital.

According to an e-mail Dietrich sent to The Gazette, St. Joseph's is “destroyed” and “the Wings building also sustained major damage.”

“We can only be in the very front part of the building. My room and the rest of the house is too dangerous. It is built on the side of the mountain, so it sliding down is a danger,” she said in the e-mail. She said there is enough food and water to last a short while, but staff members aren't sure for how long.

Dietrich said cash donations to Haiti and Wings of Hope are best at this time because it is “hard to get material donations here. We will need a lot of cash to survive and rebuild. It will take years.”

Dietrich said she has been “up and down the mountain” between Wings of Hope in Fermathe and St. Joseph's in Petionville twice since the initial earthquake to check on building status and has seen “unbelievable devastation, death and scenes.”

Renee Dietrich is a 1987 graduate of LaSalle High School and worked as a photojournalist for newspapers in Iowa and Minnesota before moving to Haiti in 2002.