ice

Well, last night was… an adventure.

An alarm sounded at 4pm-ish, Glycol leak in the Heavy Equipment Garage. Great! Another drill, and the situation exactly like the last drill/real event. So I grabbed my jacket and fire helmet and run down the beer can, through the tunnel to the HE garage entry and find glycol pouring down through the cracks in the second floor, through the light fixtures, and basically EVERYWHERE.

“Wow.” I think. “They sure went all out on this drill!”

About the time I turned off the camera, the gycol started cascading down the stairs.

About that point, it occurs to me that perhaps this isn’t a drill! I turn around, and tune into COMMS on the radio, and start asking around: “Who’s On Scene Commander (OSC)?” Everyone shrugs at me. About that time Incident Command (IC) comes on the radio: “This is IC to OSC, who’s OSC?”

Seeing everyone else just kind of looking at me, I assumed OSC until such a time as I thought Marc would show up to take it from me. (This turned out not to happen as Marc assumed Incident Command from the COMMS HQ, and I was OSC on site for the whole incident.)

So anyway, after getting everyone together in the carpenter shop where it’s warm (it’s -60°F outside the building this occurred in) I found out that there had been an explosive glycol rupture on the second floor that had vaporized extensively creating a hazardous atmosphere upstairs and completely soaked 3 workers including one of the guys on my first responder team.

Woot. About this time, Laurie the safety officer showed up, and the fire team began to arrive on site with their SCBA gear. To be honest, I can’t remember everything I did, or whatever happened. I was really tired, and operating in a kind of autopilot (which may have been a good thing, I always do better when I’m delirious).

Basically, as there was no one else in the area to rescue, the fire team entered to assess the scene and try to find a way to stop the leak, which continued. Trauma team began to tend to the injured - one of which had gotten the glycol sprayed in his eyes (it’s a good thing I read the instructions carefully on the emergency eye wash station this week! X D), the support team quickly got spare SCBA bottles and fans on site with which we opened doors and louvers on either side of the vapor and began to ventilate.

All was going well until the fire tech got on site and advised that right next to the open doors we had a 10k gallon pressurized fire suppression tank filled with water. If the valve were to freeze (being next to -60° temperature) it would rupture the tank and well… that would have been very, very bad news. X D

Peering through the sealed door into the glycol haze, after the lights had shorted out and floodlights were brought in.

So basically, I spent the next 4 hours coordinating the 4 teams - my own (Team 1), fire team (Team 2), support team (Team 3) and trauma (Team 4). From the “huddle” in the carp shop. (As seen below… only the crappy short videos would uploat atm).

Everything went quite well, it was a GREAT learning experience for me. The last drill was disastrous compared to this real event. Everyone pulled together, communicated, stayed calm, stayed supportive and got the job done. I tell you, it’s a GREAT feeling, GREAT, to be part of a team like that. It’s what I love about emergency response, it’s such a rush.

In any event, as I mentioned, apparently I did well, because all the station brass kept coming up to me and telling me how well I did. The icing on the cake though, was finding this on my facebook this morning, posted by the safety officer, Laurie.

“i’d be on your team any time, any place with you as On Scene Commander. You were excellent tonight. We made it happen–you were a key element in that.”

I love this chick, she’s so awesome. It means a lot to me that she said that - she’s been in charge of safety on the northern slopes of Alaska, dodging bullets in the oil fields of Nigeria, and pretty much coordinates everything safety related on station.

In any event, the galley kept the food warm for us, even though we were all several hours late for dinner. It was king crab and steak. Man, I tell you, it’s a harsh continent. X D

So, first off, apologize to everyone I was talking to online previously, but suddenly had disappeared for the last few weeks - two things happened. One, engineering teams arrived from Denver and they all want to work, work, work all morning while the satellite’s up and chill out later when there’s nothing to do. The other thing is, as I’ve mentioned, the satellite time moves earlier and earlier every day, so I get less and less time online every morning.

So we had a big emergency drill the other day. Situation was that there was a glycol explosion in the backup power plant and we had multiple casualties. I arrived on scene of the drill after a couple of my other team 1 members, and one of them had taken command of the scene. Things went all right, we got the injured out without dying ourselves, however our command and control needs serious work. We basically let the other teams fend for themselves - which is not good. In any event, I was recently put in command of the entire first responder team, since the current lead is leaving to get married! I need to arrange some in depth training for my people if we’re going to be trying to coordinate rescue efforts.

Anyway, after the fire team had carried the victims out from the equipment, I did a final sweep, and discovered a pinkish fluid pouring out all over the ground in the power plant. After ensuring it wasn’t part of the drill, I realized it was a real leak. At first I thought it was fuel, AN-8 to be precise, but after we evacuated everyone and canceled the drill, I learned it was a glycol leak. X D Dozens and dozens of gallons were spilling out of a hole where one of the fire crew’s SCBA had knocked out the metal stopper.

Also, I made a helmet cam with my camera and video taped the whole thing. It’s about 150 megs, so it’ll have to wait to make it online till I get off the ice. Actually some cool stuff in that.

Anyway, after that was “Manager Cooks” day, so our kitchen staff can have the day off. After all, they worked Christmas and New Years. No problem, we had a blast last time. Me and Brian and Tripp came up with ANOTHER creative dish, a mix of italian sausage, kalamata olives, ricotta cheese, tabasco and penne pasta. We called it “Hakuna Kalamata con Piggi”. Yes, a TLK reference, no, not my idea. X D

Photos, behind the cut!

This was the cooking crew that day. On the left you can see me, with Brian (COMMS tech) peering over me from behind. Tripp (SYSADMIN) is in front holding some limp asparagus, and my boss Henry (IT manager) is on the right in the orange hat. Claude (Network Engineer) is wearing a black beanie and holding some sort of spoon triumphantly in the air.

Here I am, helping to prepare our delicious dish. X D

Here I am, cradling the tool of corporal punishment that the station uses.

Here is our masterpiece, carefully presented!

And here is Brian with his invention - the X-11 deep fried ham n’ cheese sandwich. My arteries hurt just looking at it and it sat in my stomach like a fat drenched Krispy Kream donut. But boy was it good.

That’s all for now! Satellite disappears in a few minutes. Have fun everyone!

So anyway, Happy New Years to those in the rest of the world! Yesterday we had the pole moving ceremony. Basically, the pole marker is located on an ice sheet 9,000 feet thick, and as the ice sheet is moving about 30 feet a year, the geographic pole location is relocated on January 1 every year to update it. A new brass marker is crafted by the machinists on site every year, and there’s a contest every winter to design next year’s marker.

This year, the marker is an actual time capsule. No idea when it’s supposed to be opened, but the globe contains photos, notes and trinkets from the winter-overs who created it.

Below, Claude and Tripp, the network engineer and sysadmin respectively, wait eagerly for the new pole revelation! X D

And Logan, the winter site manager, unveils the new marker! Hurrah!

And behold, the new pole marker and station dome in the background. The New Years football match was canceled due to 20 kt winds, however. So we played Fallout 3 all day.

Hope you all had a good Christmas season!