Sarnothi hibernatory response to cold will probably kick in after too much exposure. They’re moving from temperature to temperature gradually enough to avoid a crash like Selkie’s experienced and they’re heading… somewhere, but their uptime in this sort of weather dosn’t give them a big window to reach it in.
I think, inwardly, Amanda is quietly regretting some of the "fish" cracks right now.
Am I the only one weirded out by the reporter just standing there watching and reporting on this and not offering help or blankets at all?
Could be said about reporters during any kind of tragedy. And realistically how much difference would one guy handing out blankets even make? The awaress from reporting on it will do more good, imo.
I know several reporters; not a one of them would do this. Most of them would drop the mike and try to help out.
Especially with people collapsing at their feet.
possibility: there’s a team of reporters and the one holding the camera and doing the narration is pointing it at people who have not yet been reached by those who are helping
No, this not weird. It seems like normal procedure for reporters covering a major disaster.
News organizations generally don’t have even one or two blankets to offer, and they certainly don’t have them in the numbers needed here. Their job is to make sure people know what is happening… and, with any luck, prod those who do have the capability to respond, to move faster to get massive help in place.
Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes (let’s hope in this case) the prodding isn’t even needed, and large-scale help is already on the way. But if the reporter dropped her microphone and, say, gave her jacket to one Sarnothi… she could be doing more harm than good.
Journalists and good reporters Should Report the story not participate, They SHOULD be impartial observers, they should NOT be inserting themselves into the story. Hunter S Thompson they are NOT supposed to be.
Exception: If the Reporter or Journalist has life-saving skills, such as a CPR certification, and it’s a choice between inserting themselves into the story or letting someone die, they’ed better freaking put themselves in the story or they’re just the worst kind of jerk.
A life is more important than so called “integrity.”
Thre’s no indication that these guys can help, but still.
argueable Rater202. if you insert yourself in the story you Turn the story over to a co worker to run with it and if they mention you great but YOU do not insert yourself in the story. The minute you become involved you can not be objective.
“The story is never more impotant than lives. If you can make a difference, you drop the camera and help.” – Can’t remember the name of the person, but he’s some world-renown war zone reporter, possibly Pulizer winner. I just remember those words and his ultra-serious expression when he said it.
They could’ve been told by the government to not interfere because of political reasons; or they could just be afraid of getting attacked by the Sarnothi (not the exiles.)
This isn’t a wartime front. Indeed, the Sar’teri have abandoned these people. I’m very surprised there aren’t even ambulances there, especially if they have been coming ashore for the past hour.
I’d mobilize every school and transit bus you could find, drive them there under police escort, and run the heaters constantly all the way there to get ’em heated up.
It’s not like their physiology and language are unknown to the right people in the government– hell, there are at least a half dozen (or more) in the cast of this story alone who could translate.
Don’t even need a translator to set up a waypoint so they can get dry and get warmer clothes at least. That can be obvious enough without a common language. The only problem would be offering food, since they wouldn’t know what they would eat, but just offering hot water might be enough. Perhaps offering just cooked plain fish, algae or other lake critters too would be obvious enough.
yep 😡
maybe an hour hasn’t been enough to set that up
You’re making me recall the Hurricane Katrina problems with mobilizing government-based relief efforts.
And how the government that was fumbling its own efforts also decided to shut down private efforts to sell things (like bottled water) in the area. Because, apparently, taking advantage of people by selling desperately needed supplies at a high profit is SO bad that it’s better to let those people have zero options at all (so they can die of thirst but at least they won’t be taken advantage of!).
And that’s over a disaster that we saw coming days/weeks in advance. This one had, what, a day or two?
It doesn’t strike me as particularly unrealistic that they might not have managed relief efforts within an hour. All depends on who’s in charge and how skilled they are at commanding during a crisis, along with the organizational quality of the groups in charge of distributing resources.
You make a good point. Still, I hope that help is on the way.
A disaster they saw coming… AND they were seen as human beings. “The world” just got told these people exist. There is a strong mix of “I don’t believe any of this sh*t.” / “WTF, we’re all gonna dieeee!!!” / “Kick ’em back, they’ll flood the economy/tookerjerrrbs!” / “I ain’t helping them! Who’s to say they’d help me? They’re aliens!” / “Why can’t we all just get along??” / “I don’t want those… people… near my kids!” going on so you can bet there may not be a “human” response yet, in every sense of the word. The saying “too soon” comes to mind but has an entirely different meaning as “humanity” tries to fish it’s head out its collective a$$. No pun intended… Oh, and I am not trying to be political or anything. Fellow writer here and this is just what I see in the subplot. Tell me if I’m wrong, Dave!
Government agencies cannot respond quickly, but people can. One good thing came out of the Katrina screwups: the Cajun Navy. Just a bunch of people that own boats and will get out and help when needed. And because there is no formal organization, they just go, rather than waiting for leaders to make a plan.
If I learned about something like this happening nearby, I would get in my van, stop at Walmart to put a bunch of blankets and heating pads on my credit card, and go down and help.
Many people did this after Harvey. I helped move many truckloads of donated supplies from a warehouse to a church on high ground in the Galveston area.
There WERE organizers for the Cajun Navy, people were sitting on their phones at home, editing Google spreadsheets to keep track of people who were calling for help, and directing the drivers of the boats to where they could pick up refugees. Some of these people worked 16-24 hour shifts in their kitchens directing rescuers up and down the flooded streets in the Houston area.
The difference in how two different municipalities in two different states officially responded to volunteer rescuers is astounding, too. During Katrina, the local officials were requesting private citizens not to help, citing safety reasons and an inability to coordinate resources and rescues. During Harvey, on the other hand, the officials were asking anyone with appropriate boating equipment to help.
The reporter may have tried to help before and gotten in trouble (“You’re supposed to be REPORTING!!!”), so she may not feel able to help until she’s done with her piece. But yes, there should be people trying to meet them at the shore and help them. Maybe as this airs, people will suddenly find reason to be at the lake.
Side note: is the reporter’s name supposed to be evoking images of the Hindenburg disaster? Because that’s what my brain makes the connection to.
Traysi is a (probably too indirect) reference to something, yes. But it’s not the Hindenberg.
Himalayas not Hindenburg. 😉
Obviously it’s an anagram! Um… “Noisy Hydrant”. Because “Rhino Dynasty” would be just silly.
I was thinking “ordain thy sin,” or “No Diary Hints,” would be the anagram.
The lack of an official response here is weird, both from a humanitarian as well as a political and security angle.
FEMA / the National Guard usually has more warning time than this. Even if it’s a ‘This is hurricane/wildfire season, so make sure the emergency supplies are stocked up.’ I don’t know if the US government has had a refugee asylum crisis like this since the Mariel Boatlift, and they had more lead time for that, too.
Don’t get me started on FEMA. “Lets put our rapid emergency response system in charge of bureaucrats.” Yeah, that worked really well last year when Harvey hit.
If you expect the government to respond, you’ve got bureaucrats. Creating a _permanent_ agency for emergency response made that problem much worse – now you have bureaucrats whose jobs _depend_ on emergencies happening, and on them not being handled by others while the bureaucrats are holding meetings. Hence, obstruction of private relief efforts is almost guaranteed.
If we have to have the government involved, use the military forces the Navy (including the Marine Corps) for hurricanes and other emergencies arising near a coast, the Army for inland, and the Air Force for transporting the other services and materiel. They are extremely bureaucratic, but they also have very strong reasons to retain an ability to respond quickly – otherwise, bureaucrats die when enemies overrun their base.
Full of feels, Mr. Warren, very full of feels. It’s too early in the morning for this many feels. (I mean other than; Cooooofffffeeee, Ccooofffffeeee!
“Lies”, not “lays”.
It may actually be more correct to be “lay” as it is a single purported destination.
Since this is what the news reporter said, all it needs is to be something that a news reporter could plausibly say. If there are people (like Jade Griffin!) to whom ‘lays’ sounds right in this context, then that already answers the question.
It’s not how I would say it. It sounds every bit as wrong to me as it does to Dafydd. But I’m not Dave, and I’m not that reporter. Prescriptivism doesn’t apply to fiction. There’s no rule that characters need to use “correct” grammar; the rule is that they should speak believably for who they are.
It’s true that this is dialogue and just needs to be the reporter’s idea of the grammar (and her idea spoken on the fly, too, which makes grammar mistakes even more likely). But for the record, the correct grammar is unequivocably “lies”. Lay is a transitory verb (it takes an object): “It’s unclear where the government will lay the blame.” Lie is intransitory (no object): “It’s unclear where the blame lies.” If the destination is doing the lying, it’s “lies.” If someone else were laying the destination, it would be “lay” or “lays”. It has nothing to do with the plurality of the destination(s). Multiple destinations would be “It’s unclear where their destinations lie”.
Although it would be lay in past tense: “There was no indication in which direction their goal lay, but they were heading there regardless.” It’s a bit formal, though, and you gotta get the prepositional phrase in there just right, so most people won’t use this turn of phrase.
And the relevance to real world issues has just gone over 9000…
From Forward: “Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter thinks the U.S. should learn a lesson from Israel’s treatment of Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border”
Are we going to hear from this universe’s AC? (Please God No.)
But you have to admit it’s a perfect example of synchronicity.
Brad, you do realize those protestors were violent right. Throwing rocks and stones and bottles and shooting Not to mention Katushya rockets. CONSTANTLY coming from Gaza. HUGE DIFFERENCE. ONE is a society that has been nothing but belligerent Controlled by a terrorist organization. The other are a bunch of refugees that have been forcibly removed or at least coerced under threat of force to leave.
Israel will allow citizenship to any Palestinian without a record that wishes to apply for it. VERY VERY FEW do.
You beat me to it. 🙂
To clarify, that’s to joecrouse.
https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/i-said-israel-should-be-ashamed-of-its-actions-on-the-gaza-border-now-i-am-the-one-who-is-ashamed-1.464233
Of the ones killed at the boarder in Israel 50 were agents of hamas per Hamas’S own admission.
Israel was screwed either way either NOT defend itself Or allow its enemy into its heart.
Was Alaa Asawafiri, a 26-yo woman, unarmed, with a group of other unarmed young women who got within 25 metres of a barbed wire fence (well beyond the required 10 metres) to yell (not throw anything, just chant/yell) “This is our land, not yours!” also a Hamas agent? She just stood at over twice the required distance from an artificial marker of a “no go zone” and got shot in the stomach by an Israeli soldier.
Late last week she was in critical condition in a hospital, but given how Israel doesn’t let the international (or even their own!) humanitarian missions deliver medicines and hospital gear to Gaza, it’s very unlikely she’s alive anymore.
She was handicapped and had learned embroidery in a school set up to help such handicapped people, and had gone on to the demonstration to show her embroidery work (bag and smartphone covers) to some of the other young women. She was never intended to end up at the front, but because the soldiers had shot at the ground before the women shortly before they short _at_ them, it is likely that a brief moment of panic had moved her to the front.
And you say they’re all Hamas agents? How pathetic must you be to actually believe that?
I won’t make this into a further political discussion, I just wanted to give a “face” to one of the people who get shot every day at the Gaza/Israel border, and whom Israel officially claims to be enemy combatants just so they don’t have to explain shooting people who were staying where they were told to say, shouting. Just shouting. Not even insulting, not cursing, not behaving in any way aggressively or threateningly. They were simply shouting “This is our land, not yours!”
And two typos managed to sneak in, I see – “shot”, not “short” and “stay”, not “say”. You’ll notice the places when you read, I’m sure.
Why the fuck aren’t neutral organizations there, right now, offering appropriate clothing and blankets for the weather and trying to collect them into a warm place?
The story just broke this is like 5-10 minutes in real time.
According to the reporter these people have been coming out of the lake for an hour.
See my above comment for a possible explanation. Humanity being very inhumane due to still coming to grips with the Sarnothi issue is what it boils down to. Arguing with themselves instead of lending a hand tends to be very human.
has anyone ever considered how much bullshit a Minnesota snow storm is? you CANT react fast in those. Shuffling plow support alone has got to be a B&^%H
i’m just glad selkie and amanda seem to be getting along. I wonder if Amanda will fight for her now.
Probably the response has not yet appeared because the Sarnothi are coming ashore where there is not an obvious human landing point. They may be being driven ashore at that point rather than points of their choice. People may not yet have figured out there is a problem with cold – after all they came out of the water, and if I went into the water in winter I would be dead of cold faster than those Sarnothi are collapsing. And they might bite. And blankets don’t help without heating pads, so the first responding civilians may not be having much luck figuring out what to do, plus the nervous non-English speaking Sarnothi may be trying to dodge the humans to run to where they next have underwater warmth, as six episodes of refusing blankets could be enough to cause the most sturdy Sarnothi to collapse.
That said, the human emergency response teams keep buses on tap for things like this. Many years ago I lived in an apartment building which had a fire. On our way out with the baby, her diaper bag and our wallets I grabbed a chair, knowing they were also evacuating our next door neighbour, a frail older woman who could not stand for more than a few minutes. But my chair was not needed because before everyone was even out of the building a bus pulled up and stood idling for all of us to go inside. They called the bus before the even reached our doorbells.
Unless some xenophobic bureacrats are blocking the landing of the Sarnothi, the buses will soon be there. They might be there anyway. And if they buses are not there, or are insufficient, there will soon be a bunch of human civilian volunteers with cars, and with the heat in their cars jacked up to maximum everyone in the car is sweating temperature. Once the humans figure out how to help they will pass the word along, and once the Sarnothi tell each other that a car coming up and doors opening and a nervous human beckoning come inside is a chance to warm up, they will get this working.
This scene is very good luck for the Sarnothi. It will mobilize civilian helpers and civilian sympathy. These are not illegal immigrants, these are refugees who are collapsing.
Are you Canadian? Because what you’re describing, and the feeling you’re showing, is the kind of response I’d want to see – but in the U.S. I just don’t think it works that way anymore. In the U.S. they are almost certainly “illegal” simply because they didn’t go through the bureaucracy to get the paperwork. Refugee or not doesn’t matter at all. ICE would show up, incarcerate them, separate parents from children (this is policy now), and either keep them imprisoned for months, or force them back into the lake regardless of what would happen to them there.
Sad but true. Though the fact that the government has been working with sarnothi before this makes me think the political situation in Dave’s US is quite different from the real world one.
The people illegally entering the US are not refugees the are economic migrants.
…like, you know, your ancestors, whenever they moved there in hopes of better lives?
We know that Selkie-world differs from our world in some rather major ways. This is where we have to hope that our world’s horrifying mishandling of refugees does not fully translate. (And yes, I am Canadian, which means that I expect government action to fail refugees, when it does, through lack of imagination and bureaucratic thinking, rather than the active malice I see in ICE.)
I think there’s reason for that hope, because, while Dave has shown himself willing to put his characters through some very unpleasant learning experiences, he’s shown no signs of wanting to push this story into full-on dystopia.
But we shall have to wait and see.
Mentioned it on the last page but the sarnothi having a more or less a blank slate with humans is a big benefit for them – like a lot of the push back against our rl refugees is due to religious differences, plus there’s the unfortunate terrorist angle to consider – with sarnothi they don’t yet have that.
As someone who just went through Hurricane Harvey I can tell you that in the U.S. it absolutely works that way.
Stores that lost power set up barbecues out in the parking lot to cook and distribute their stock for free so it wouldn’t go to waste.
I personally volunteered to move donated relief supplies (diapers, formula, water, food) from the coast to a storage facility further inland when the location being used as a warehouse was being threatened by flooding.
Hundreds of people donated their time (the Cajun Navy, the Texas Navy) to rescuing people flooded out of their homes by driving their personal watercraft (fishing boats, larger boats, jetskis) up and down streets in flooded areas, paying for gas with their own money. (note that when flooding occurs in these situations you’re not driving around in nice clear water– you’re driving your $20,000 boat in sewage.)
Mattress Mack, a giant furniture retailer in Houston, opened his stores to refugees, allowing people to stay in his warehouses on brand new mattresses, even buying them food with his own money.
These are all things I personally witnessed in the Houston/Galveston area.
…so I can tell you that when disaster strikes even Americans will do whatever it takes to help people.
A-PG:: Most often IN spite? Or TO spite the government?
That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in emergency to suffer the the slings and arrows of inept beaurocracy, or by taking action render it Moot?
In my experience most Americans (like most people everywhere), are personally kind and generous. When moved by disasters that strike people they feel commonality with, they can be enormously resourceful. They have good reason to be proud of efforts like the Cajun Navy — this exhibits one of the best sides of human nature.
But notice… that this only happens when they feel empathy with the victims. Empathy is not automatic. It can be disrupted. And that vulnerability to disruption can be used to allow, or even create, horrors. Houston got the help it desperately needed.
Puerto Rico didn’t.
the fact that the US spends 60 billion of its military budget on Humanitarian assistance through the military is telling.
This is true. I have a friend who lives in the capital, and they didn’t have power for months. Literal months. We would hear from her every once in a blue moon. And these are fellow United States citizens, not even refugees from another country like the Sarnothi are. A lot of the response in the news and in the community (like Guru, I live in Texas) was that we shouldn’t be aiding a “foreign country” and complaints about how we should be directing relief efforts to just “citizens” in the U.S.
Thankfully, she didn’t encounter the same issues in regards to food and water like we heard in the media, but even once she had power again, it was intermittent and the rest of the island was still going without.
Caveat: I know their citizenship is severely lacking compared to what we have stateside, but the point was to demonstrate the logic of people who live here on the mainland in their desire to not provide assistance to PR while assisting Florida and Texas by claiming that we shouldn’t aid “foreign countries.”
Did you mean to say, “Still Hasn’t”?
I live in Wisconsin, and would gladly share my home with Sarnothi refugees. I actually think my college has quite a few bunks that could be given over to the cause. Even fictional me would be willing!
damn…this reminds me of the stories+pictures of people fleeing from the oncoming russian soldiers in what was one of the coldest winters in history (44/45) when nothing but sheer adrenaline+stubborness kept them walking, but with utterly numb faces…brrr!
considdering how selkie reacted to even a bit of cold, i´d say all of them are bound to crash down with pneumonia
Panel 2 seems to show someone shivering, which is a warm-blooded trait — but maybe that’s just dripping water, instead.
I can’t tell if the one who collapsed is male or female — I think braids have been associated with females so far, but “Tete!” suggests male, if it’s a name.
It could be pre-collapse weakness-induced shaking.
Selkie and Pohl understood what the two refugees are saying to each other. I suppose neither will want to translate for the others in the room. My guess, from context:
“Tete! Are you all right?”
“It… is… soo… cold!” (Or maybe something even more heartrending.)
This furthers my suspicion that the Sar’teri’s actions are going to come back and bite them BIG time. They are not doing themselves any favors with the way they’re handling this whole thing, and it’s clear they haven’t bothered to learn much, if anything, about the people who share their borders. We know that the governments of Canada and the US are probably likely to accept these refugees, and sending them out like this is only going to get the general public on the side of the refugees.
I REALLY wonder what Prof. Trunchbull’s reaction to the entire broadcast is. We only got to see his initial reaction, not how he responded to the impending refugee issue.
that comment shows great insight. One of the things that Dave does, is try to show the evil in good people and the good in evil people. Almost all the characters who are mean, the straw-men that Dave holds up to us as targets, are later shown to have redeeming overlooked qualities; there are situations, reasons, circumstances, that have caused them to be/to act the way they are/do. Dave is better at that than I.
Man. This is just too sad. I really hope someone can help these guys soon.