Driftbusters!

Well I have survived my ten day trek to SLC and I am now resting comfortably here in the Valley in Yosemite. As we speak I am waiting for Mick, and Mrs. Mick to arrive from Reno. Mick was the Powerplant Electrician at McMurdo last season and he and his wife will be visiting with us for the weekend.

Now on to the class recap. I left you last when we were having driver training class. That all went well. We learned several lessons, like 4 cars don’t fit into a 2 car turn; seatbelts are a good thing if someone parks their kart in the track backwards right in front of you, and last but most importantly never let Flounder drive!!!!

So on Monday we had a morning session where we went and toured the Utah Air National Guard at the Salt Lake City Airport. We received a tour of their ARFF trucks and of the KC-135 Refueling planes.



Does this look familiar Mr. Bill???

We won’t be seeing these planes on the Ice, but it was a good way to get some aircraft familiarization for those of us that know nothing about airplanes. And after the tour we did some more turret practice as well as some class room discussions.

So after the morning session was over we took the afternoon off and we had the remaining scenarios in a night burn. We ran through three scenarios from 8PM – Midnight. Each of them became increasingly more complicated.

These photos are of the ground fire and suppression efforts on the first drill that I was Incident Commander on. This had to be a scary sight if you were flying into SLC on Monday night on a commercial flight. “Dear what is that glow over there?”





For the second drill we had FF’s take the positions of the Lt’s and so I got to be on the nozzle for the primary interior attack. Which is always a fine place to be when you are inside a fire.

And then on the last drill I led the Rescue and we did the primary search then we took over the primary handline from the first in team. While suppressing the remaining fire we had one of our crew go missing. They of course were stolen by the instructors for this purpose, and with the help of the FAST Team we had him located and out of the aircraft in only a few minutes.

And for our last day we worked with the crew from the NY Air National Guard. We had a tour and tactical review of the LC-130’s that will actually be on the Ice. The crew was very helpful and it was a great way to learn what we will need incase of a true emergency on the Ice.

That is all for now.
RJ