Royal Caribbean International

The extraordinary situation in Haiti continues and will go on in various ways for years. While this blog is a vehicle for communicating some of the aspects of what Royal Caribbean is thinking and doing, there is no way for a person or a company to truly comprehend the v...astness of the tragedy or the needs of the Haitian people....

I am proud of what our people and our ships are doing and below John Weis gives some very specific examples of great contributions being made by great Royal Caribbean people and their family members The ships going back to Labadee, including Navigator of the Seas today..., are obviously making a very valuable contribution to the relief effort by offloading supplies at Labadee....

On the ground in Labadee, the word is that many people are traveling from Port Au Prince to Cap Haitian. For those of you that don’t know, Cap Haitian is about 15 miles from Labadee on the other side of the mountain. A gymnasium there is being used as a makeshift hospit...al as all the other medical facilities are full and there are thousands of people coming into Cap Haitian to...

The world has understood with intense clarity that the earthquake in Haiti is an event of enormous magnitude requiring a global outpouring of assistance. Initial fund-raising efforts appear to be very successful. The crucial variable is the organization of the relief ef...fort and the ability to get supplies to the people in need....

My meeting Thursday morning with President Clinton (Special UN Envoy to Haiti), Dr. Paul Farmer (Deputy Special Envoy) and about 50 other concerned people from the U.S. Government, the private sector and the NGO community had the sense of urgency one would expect under ...the circumstances. While there is very little of a positive nature at this point in the crisis, President Clinton is clearly taking this catastrophe personally....

Today was the first day of real progress from our standpoint. We loaded Independence of the Seas with relief supplies today at San Juan, Puerto Rico, which included 60 cases of badly needed water and other dry goods. We have also started to receive additional provision...s, including four truckloads of drinking water, from our suppliers at our logistic center, which we are preparing to load on to Navigator of the Seas...

Everyone is trying to come to grips with the immensity of the challenge that now presents itself in and around Port-au-Prince (PAP). We are enormously relieved that Maryse Kedar, President of SOLANO, our Haitian subsidiary, is okay despite having been in PAP at the moment of the earthquake. ...

We are all extremely saddened to hear of the earthquake-caused destruction in Haiti. While many details are imprecise or unknown at this point, there are unquestionably catastrophic conditions involving many casualties and great loss of property. ...