Alive News

In the darkness, down the twisting stone tunnels and through the murky water, they awaited an uncertain future. Outside, under the skies of a modern planet, cameras and bystanders and a rapt global audience of many millions looked toward the remote hills of northern Thailand, connected by cables and satellites and wireless signals and gadgets in their pockets. For two weeks and more this went on.

We have barely a hint of what the past 18 days were like for the 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach. But for the rest of us, watching from afar as an uneasy planet’s media juggernaut beamed us live shots and the unknowable was revealed drip by tantalizing drip, we knew one thing: It was hard to look away. Particularly when these two words were splattered across the world’s websites and mobile apps in impactful typefaces: “WATCH LIVE.”

Were they even alive at all in there after so many days? Probably not. And yet they were. Could we get a glimpse? There they were, captured on video, waving tentatively to what had fast become their public. Could they be pulled out, through water that rose and fell and threatened to rise again? That question, drawn out for so many days as the clock ticked menacingly, found its answer Tuesday with a resounding yes.

“We really needed something to cheer for right now. We needed some positivity. We needed a good headline that could carry the day,” says Daryl Van Tongeren, an associate professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan who studies how humans build meaning in their lives.

“People started believing, like a snowball rolling down a hill: ‘Maybe they WILL get out,’” he said.

First, the obvious. These were children who did nothing wrong, and we love tales of innocents. Plus, it was easy to conclude for several days that they’d met their end prematurely and unfairly. When they did not — when children not unlike those in our own lives had a fighting chance at being OK — many eyes locked in on the story.

At that point, the saga was also fueled by hope, and by a possibility of a good outcome — both elements of any memorable human tale.

There are other reasons this particular story was so captivating, though. They cast light on some things about ourselves and about the strange forces — sometimes wonderful and sometimes destructive — that shape our lives in a modern media society.

THE STORYLINE COULDN’T HAVE BEEN MORE HOLLYWOOD

It’s become cliche to compare the real world to showbiz (“It was like something out of a movie,” so many witnesses to disaster say). But even bearing that in mind, it would have been impossible to craft a Hollywood treatment that felt more cinematic.

For several decades in the American film industry during the 20th century, a production code made sure that the bad guys couldn’t win and that bad things couldn’t be shown. What’s less known is that the code discouraged ambiguity and subtly encouraged sharp, distinctive resolutions to plotlines — something that came to be known as the “Hollywood ending” and endures to this day.

That’s what we got Tuesday out of northern Thailand — a satisfying, all-tied-up-in-a-bow Hollywood ending, the kind that would make a reality-TV producer salivate.

“This sets the framework for what we expect from a great story,” says Roscoe Scarborough, a sociologist at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania who studies first responders and reality television.

“Any action movie follows this script. Thinking they’re dead but they’re alive. A race against time and the odds to get them out,” says Scarborough, who is also a firefighter. “It’s a cultural product that we understand. But this is a real-life version.”

TECHNOLOGY HELPED SAVE THEM

Our world today is utterly consumed with technology — witness the ability to witness a lot of this event on television and mobile devices — but also increasingly uneasy with the way it affects our lives and landscapes.

So to look at such a remote area and watch a good outcome unfold because of smart uses of technology, from the pumping effort that drained water out of the cave to the carefully calibrated oxygen tanks used in extracting the kids, illuminated the ways technology can encourage our humanity rather than whittle away at it.

SOMEONE SACRIFICED EVERYTHING

In any epic narrative, something precious is lost. In this case, that was 38-year-old Saman Gunan, the Thai Navy SEAL who died in the cave late last week during rescue efforts.

This happens often in rescue efforts: People who die heroically trying to help others become martyrs who are seen as the best of us. The highest-profile example in recent years: the firefighters and police officers who died helping people on Sept. 11, 2001.

“They become symbols of our shared humanity, representative of our collective values,” Scarborough says.

POLITICS WERE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND

It’s pretty obvious that our media-consuming world needs some news that couldn’t possibly be contentious or political. This story deftly managed that.

The enemies were diffuse — nature and the ticking clock. There was no backstory of refugees or immigration or gun control or economic disparity. There were, to most of the world watching, no politics whatsoever.

Additionally, their 2014 military coup notwithstanding, Thais are generally quiet participants in the global community for the most part.

Thus, not much to argue about.

IT UNFOLDED GRADUALLY, AND TIME WAS OF THE ESSENCE

Serial narratives have been around for a while after their ascent in print form during the 1800s and as “cliffhangers” like “The Perils of Pauline” or “Flash Gordon” during cinema’s early days. Their calculus: They give you some of the story but leave you anticipating more. Serial podcasts and TV season finales carry on that tradition today.

In the case of the cave saga, a series of inflection points kept turning attention back to northern Thailand. The effect, said one observer, felt like the tiny rush you get when people, one after another, like your Facebook post or Instagram photo.

And over it all hung a ticking clock. Would the waters rise again? Would oxygen run out? Would rescuers beat the countdown?

In the end, this strange summer saga in Thailand was the kind of story that a modern, media-consuming human is literally conditioned through life to consume.

It takes its place among similar underground sagas that entranced the planet — the trapped Copiapó miners (Chile, 2010); the Quecreek mining disaster (Pennsylvania, 2002), 18-month-old Jessica McClure trapped in a well (Texas, 1987); and the first such event covered by modern media, the trapping and subsequent cave death of Floyd Collins (Kentucky, 1925), where coverage featured radio bulletins and, in the spirit of the age, a popular ballad recorded on acetate disc.

Sounds antique and distant, right? But in the end it’s the same. No matter how much the decades pass or the technology progresses, we do the same thing: We watch, we wonder, and we hope for a happy ending. And then we move on.

This time, though, in this contentious season of humanity, we can do it with a smile.

The government continues the rescue efforts meant for Indian pilgrims left stranded at Simikot and Hilsa due to torrential rains while returning from Kailash Mansarovor (Lake) in Tibet.

The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has said all mechanism including helicopters have been operated to rescue the Indian pilgrims stranded in the mountainous region. Adverse weather condition earlier for a couple of days had its impact on the rescue operations. Rescue works via helicopters are going on effectively since Tuesday, as said by the Ministry.

Adverse weather had disrupted air flights on July 1 and 2, hampering the works to bring stranded pilgrims back to the destination. According to Ministry Spokesperson, Ghanshyam Upadhyay, 553 pilgrims are currently at Simikot and 300 are at Hilsa. If weather favours, all stranded pilgrims are likely to be rescued by tomorrow.

The local administration, Nepal Army, Nepal Police are jointly working to rescue them via helicopters of Tara, Simrik and Summit Airlines.

Earlier, three (Indian) pilgrims died of high-altitude sickness at the Kailash Mansarovar while four died while returning from the site, the Ministry said. Last year, the death toll (of Indian Mansarovar pilgrims) due to high-altitude sickness was 21.

Stranded pilgrims are staying in hotels and no problem is reported in food and accommodation facilities for them.
Tourism Minister Rabindra Adhikari on Tuesday tweeted that 160 stranded pilgrims were airlifted to Nepalgunj.

In his tweet addressed to Indian Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, Minister Adhikari wrote that helicopters transported 250 pilgrims to Simikot from Hilsa, adding that rescue operations would continue.
Around 1,600 Indian Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims are reported stranded at Simikot Airport and Hilsa along the Nepal-Tibet border in Humla due to torrential monsoon rains.

As stated by Krishna Gautam, information officer for Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) office in Nepalgunj, works of airlifting Indian pilgrims from Simikot and Hilsa to Nepalgunj are underway since yesterday.
Summit, Sita and Tara Airlines are operating 10-12 flights per day to bring Indian pilgrims from Humla to Nepalgunj, Banke. A flight can accommodate up to fourteen people.

Banke Chief District Officer Ramesh Kumar KC said around 150 Indians were brought from Simikot to Nepalgunj and proper arrangements are in place for their food and accommodations. Pilgrims are requested to contact with the local administration, police or related travel agency in case of any discomfort.

As stated by him, there seems no problem to send rescued pilgrims to Kathmandu from Nepalgunj airport.

People of the villages skirting Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire began mourning the few dead who could be identified after an eruption killed dozens by engulfing them in floods of searing ash and mud.

Mourners cried over caskets lined up in a row in the main park of San Juan Alotenango on Monday evening before rescuers stopped their work for another night.

There is no electricity in the hardest hit areas of Los Lotes and El Rodeo, so most searching continued only until sunset.

Guatemalan authorities put the death toll at 69, but officials said just 17 had been identified so far because the intense heat of the volcanic debris flows left most bodies unrecognizable.

“It is very difficult for us to identify them because some of the dead lost their features or their fingerprints” from the red-hot flows, said Fanuel Garcia, director of the National Institute of Forensic Sciences. “We are going to have to resort to other methods … and if possible take DNA samples to identify them.”

Sunday’s eruption caught residents of remote mountain hamlets off guard, with little or no time to flee to safety.

Using shovels and backhoes, emergency workers dug through the debris and mud, perilous labor on smoldering terrain still hot enough to melt shoe soles a day after the volcano exploded in a hail of ash, smoke and molten rock.

Bodies were so thickly coated with ash that they looked like statues. Rescuers used sledgehammers to break through the roofs of houses buried in debris up to their rooflines to check for anyone trapped inside.

Hilda Lopez said her mother and sister were still missing after the slurry of hot gas, ash and rock roared into her village of San Miguel Los Lotes, just below the mountain’s flanks.

“We were at a party, celebrating the birth of a baby, when one of the neighbors shouted at us to come out and see the lava that was coming,” the distraught woman said. “We didn’t believe it, and when we went out the hot mud was already coming down the street.”

“My mother was stuck there, she couldn’t get out,” said Lopez, weeping and holding her face in her hands.

Her husband, Joel Gonzalez, said his father had also been unable to escape and was believed to be “buried back there, at the house.”

Conred spokesman David de Leon said the volcano first erupted around midday Sunday, billowing smoke and ash miles into the sky. Then around 2 p.m., came a new, more powerful explosion.

Soon, searing flows of lava, ash and rock mixed with water and debris were gushing down the volcano’s flanks, blocking roads and burning homes.

“It traveled much faster. It arrived in communities right when the evacuation alerts were being sent out,” de Leon said.

Authorities scrambled to issue an evacuation order. Some communities emptied out safely. But in places like Los Lotes and the village of El Rodeo, about eight miles (12 kilometers) downslope from the crater, it was too late for many.

The fast-moving flows overtook people in homes and streets with temperatures reaching as high as 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 Celsius), and hot ash and volcanic gases that can cause rapid asphyxiation.

“As soon as we received the information around 6 a.m. that the volcano was in an eruptive phase, the protocol was initiated to verify with different sectors and also talk to the communities, to community leaders,” De Leon said. “We had the information from our scientific service, and they told us the trend was that the activity was diminishing.”

In El Rodeo on Monday, heavily armed soldiers wearing blue masks to avoid breathing in ash stood guard behind yellow tape cordoning off the disaster scene. Helmeted workers carried bodies away on stretchers, and smoke was still rising from some parts of the ashen landscape strewn with boulders and other debris.

President Jimmy Morales traveled to survey the disaster area.

Emergency crews in helicopters managed to pull at least 10 people alive from areas cut off by the flows. Conred said 3,271 people had been evacuated.

Hurricane Harvey was yet another example of how devastating the power of nature can be, at times. Disastrous flooding, winds gusting up to 95 km/h and tornadoes as well was the most devastating thing the area witnessed in a long time. This villainous power of nature witnessed in the Southeastern Texas caused billions of dollars in property damage and took at least 9 lives away. Ever since the Hurricane Harvey hit the place in the early hours of August 26th, the Internet filled with harrowing and heartbreaking photos. Stories of tragedy, rescue community and generosity were also filled on the Internet. Almost the whole world know about this ‘Hurricane Harvey’ being one of the most devastating things which have happened in the recent times. The power of nature yet again made headlines and the following photos are going to stir your heart for sure.

These powerful photos clearly portray how devastating this power of nature called Hurricane Harvey was:

1. This furniture store in Texas is providing food and shelter for the people who are harmed by the Hurricane Harvey.

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2. Dog named Otis also fell a victim to this devastating act of god. He is walking around Sinton Texas with a bag full of dog food to feed his children.

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3. This policeman passed away out of exhaustion. He worked for countless hours to rescue the victims of Hurricane Harvey.

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4. Dog barely hanging on for life. Thankfully she was rescued from the power of nature, henceforth.

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5. Can’t leave the pets behind as they flee because they are a part of the family too.

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6. Waiting for rescue during the hurricane made the mother float this cute little baby in a large plastic container.

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7. Joe Garcia carrying his dog away from his flooded home.

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8. That’s how Houston looked after the destructive power of nature struck the place. Hurricane Harvey was definitely the biggest disaster which happened in Texas.

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9. Rescuing process was on point. Good job. The constables in Texas worked really hard and the officers clearly deserve respect.

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10. These people took up the responsibility to rescue some people as well as pets all by themselves. Good people, indeed. They stopped to eat donuts too but unfortunately it was closed.

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11. Dad so happy to meet his children after successfully rescuing people from the Hurricane Harvey.

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12. Here we see, Harris County Sheriff’s Office Deputy carrying two children to safety at one time. Respect!

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