First Haiti, then Venezuela, then Guatemala and now earlier today a 5.8 quake took place off the coast of the Cayman Islands.WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE!?!?!?!
A 5.8 earthquake shook the Cayman Islands, south of Cuba on Tuesday morning, reports said.On Monday morning, a strong earthquake rocked Guatemala and parts of El Salvador, but no there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage in either country.The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.0.The USGS says it hit Monday morning about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Guatemala City, where it was felt by many residents. There were reports of shaking in the Guatemalan countryside and in El Salvador as well.Civil protection officials in the two countries says so far there are no reports of injuries or damage, but authorities are still checking.
It's one week after the Haiti Earthquake and the World has seen earthquakes in Argentina, Venezuela and most recently Guatemala
(CNN) -- When Catherine Jones recently booked a Royal Caribbean cruise that included a stop in Haiti, she never expected that her vacation would lead to deep soul searching and an emergency family meeting.Jones, who lives in Hickory, North Carolina, is scheduled to start the trip at the beginning of next month -- a five-day getaway with her sister, who is in the Army and will go to Afghanistan in March, and their 87-year-old mother."We kind of discussed it: How can you sit there and say, 'Waiter, bring me a drink' while I'm on a private beach ... knowing that 100 miles away, people are dying," Jones said.It's a debate that's been raging ever since Royal Caribbean resumed bringing vacationers to Haiti after last week's earthquake, which killed tens of thousands of people in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince.Royal Caribbean deposits the tourists on the picturesque peninsula of Labadee, which was unaffected by the disaster and where the company has spent millions of dollars on what it calls its own "private paradise."The area is heavily guarded, and visitors don't spend the night. But they enjoy Labadee's "pristine beaches, breathtaking scenery and spectacular water activities," according to Royal Caribbean's Web site.Blogs and message boards have been full of outrage and disgust at the idea of tourists frolicking in the sun while bodies pile up in Port-au-Prince and quake survivors struggle to stay alive."Royal Caribbean is performing a sickening act to me by taking tourists to Haiti," wrote one poster on CNN's Connect the World blog. "Having a beach party while people are dead, dying and suffering minutes away hardly makes me want to cruise that particular line," wrote another.What's the right thing to do?Experts in ethics and sustainable tourism said that kind of reaction is natural and understandable, but they urged people to look deeper at the issue and consider the benefits of tourism for Haiti now and beyond."Monies that are coming in as part of tourism are going to trickle down throughout the local economy at a time when the local people need it the most," said Brian Mullis, president of Sustainable Travel International, a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible travel.Because visitors can have a positive effect during their stay, tourism should still be taking place in Haiti, even at this terrible time, Mullis said.In a statement issued after the earthquake, the United Nations World Tourism Organization also weighed in, saying that "tourism can become a useful instrument for the necessary reconstruction process in Haiti."History shows other examples of the importance of tourism to devastated areas: New York inviting visitors after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and New Orleans, Louisiana, appealing for tourist dollars after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Cruise line respondsMeanwhile, Royal Caribbean announced it would donate at least $1 million in humanitarian aid to Haiti and contribute all of the company's net revenue from Labadee to the relief effort.The company's cruise ships are also delivering supplies -- including rice, dried beans, powdered milk, water and canned goods -- to the region.Officials with the cruise line have been trying to reassure customers who may be having second thoughts about going on a trip that includes a stop in Haiti."It isn't better to replace a visit to Labadee (or for that matter, to stay on the ship while it's docked in Labadee) with a visit to another destination for a vacation," Adam Goldstein, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, wrote on his blog."Why? Because being on the island and generating economic activity for the straw market vendors, the hair-braiders and our 230 employees helps with relief while being somewhere else does not help."Royal Caribbean says it has been one of Haiti's largest foreign investors for almost 30 years. The company spent $50 million developing Labadee, Goldstein told NPR.Considering the ethicsHaiti's plight wouldn't improve if the cruise ships were diverted to another nearby island and pretended the disaster wasn't happening, agreed Chris MacDonald, a senior fellow at Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics and a philosophy professor at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He also writes The Business Ethics Blog."The cruise ships aren't hurting anyone, in fact they're doing some good, they're bringing some help," MacDonald said.People who believe it's disrespectful for tourists to enjoy themselves so close to a disaster zone should realize that the alternative of avoiding the area wouldn't be more respectful, MacDonald added.The proximity sets off our gut reactions, but it doesn't seem to make any real moral difference, he said. Mullis pointed out that the Dominican Republic -- Haiti's touristy neighbor on the island of Hispaniola -- is also close to the disaster but is doing business as usual. "Anyone who doesn't feel a bit of awkwardness at the thought of beach volleyball in the north of Haiti right now doesn't have normal moral intuitions," MacDonald said."[But] the world needs to signal that Haiti isn't now just this fenced-off, quarantined place where you can never invest, you can never do business. Haiti is, to some tiny extent, still open for business. That's a hopeful message in a very, very grim situation."It's a message Catherine Jones is taking to heart. After much discussion, she and her family are going forward with their Royal Caribbean cruise that will include a stop in Labadee, Haiti. She won't be able to enjoy herself that day, Jones said, but she is hoping the money she spends will help the locals, and she is comforted by that thought."It's one of those situations that you can have a million views on it. But the fact is it happened, they depend on us for our money that we bring, I guess we'll go," Jones said.
(CNN) -- Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg.Then he remembered -- he had an app for that.Woolley, an aid worker, husband, and father of two boys, followed instructions on his cell phone to survive the January 12 earthquake in Haiti."I had an app that had pre-downloaded all this information about treating wounds. So I looked up excessive bleeding and I looked up compound fracture," Woolley told CNN.The application on his iPhone is filled with information about first aid and CPR from the American Heart Association. "So I knew I wasn't making mistakes," Woolley said. "That gave me confidence to treat my wounds properly."Trapped in the ruins of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, he used his shirt to bandage his leg, and tied his belt around the wound. To stop the bleeding on his head, he firmly pressed a sock to it.Concerned he might have been experiencing shock, Woolley used the app to look up what to do. It warned him not to sleep. So he set his phone alarm to go off every 20 minutes.Once the battery got down to less than 20 percent of its power, Woolley turned it off. By then, he says, he had trained his body not to sleep for long periods, drifting off only to wake up within minutes.Woolley's job keeps him tech savvy. He oversees interactive projects for the Christian child advocacy organization Compassion International in Colorado Springs, Colorado.With his injuries tended to, he wrote a note to his family in his journal: "I was in a big accident, an earthquake. Don't be upset at God. He always provides for his children even in hard times. I'm still praying that God will get me out, but he may not. But even so he will always take care of you."The journal is stained with his blood.After more than 60 hours, Woolley was pulled from the rubble."Those guys are rescue heroes," he said of the crew that pulled him out.Interactive map of where to find aid, hospitals in HaitiHis colleague David Hames has not been found. The two had been standing together when the earthquake struck and the Hotel Montana crumbled. They were making a film about poverty in Haiti and had just gotten back to the hotel, heading to the elevator in the lobby."Then all of a sudden just all craziness broke loose," Woolley said. "Convulsions of the ground around us, the walls started rippling and then falling on us. [Hames] yelled out, 'I think it's an earthquake!' I looked for someplace safe to jump to and there was no safe place."When the shaking stopped, Woolley couldn't see. And his friend was not with him.He turned on the focus light of a camera he was wearing around his neck, but he didn't have his glasses. "So I actually took some pictures and would look at the back of the lens of the camera and saw in one of those pictures the elevator that I ended up hobbling over to. And that became my safe place."Once in the elevator, he used the app -- called "Pocket First Aid & CPR" from Jive Media -- to tend to his injuries. Woolley said his phone "was like a high-tech version of a Swiss Army knife that enabled me to treat my own injuries, track time, stay awake and stay alive."Woolley heard voices of some other people trapped nearby, and they spoke with each other."About a day, maybe day and a half in, we heard rescuers, and they had a list of our names at that point, because they were able to talk to one of the people we were talking with. And so then it seemed like, OK, this is going to happen, we're actually going to get rescued."But then it just took a long time and there were times where I didn't hear anything or I'd hear drilling in a far part of the building and just didn't get any reassurance they were still coming for me," Woolley said."The scene outside was a lot more chaotic and less simple than I imagined in my head. ... But eventually they came for me and did an amazing rescue."Back home now in Colorado Springs with his wife Christina and children Josh, 6, and Nathan, 3, Woolley said he's grateful to God for getting him through the ordeal."Happiness is a morning with ... family, filled with Legos, kissing boo-boos and normalcy."
A Haitian government video shows the moment the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck in January, and shows parts of the palace crumbling under the impact.The video was released by the Haitian government at a recent conference on the future of Haiti in the Dominican Republic.The massive quake killed more than 300,000 people and left many more homeless.
