Penguin Intrusion

Well it has finally happened, the penguins are taking over the runway. We have had two penguin intrusions on the Ice Runway in the last two days. I got to lead my first penguin herding incident tonight. Our incident was very nonconfrontational. Unlike the evening before. We had two Adele penguins heading south towards the 13 end of the runway (Airport lingo there, maybe Mr. Bill can explain it to some of you). We had two hours until the next flight came in and our friends were making good time on thier own. So we simply followed along in our truck and watched them keep heading south off of the end of the runway.

Things didn't go so smothly for the last crew. At about 3:50 AM the tower called them and said that they had a penguin on the runway and a LC-130 headed in for landing. So they had to get moving to get this guy off. We it took six firefighters about an hour to get the stubborn penguin off of the active runway, while a 130 circled overhead. I have a few photos and I have tried something new to me. I have a video attached to the blog. It is 8mb, so if you have dial-up still you won't like me. But it is actually worth the wait. About the 1:20 mark is a good shot.

We also had another big incident in the last two days. On my day off I recieved a recall page about 3pm. So I wandered over to the station, thinking that this was a pratice page before the big Mass Casualty Drill scheduled for next week. And as I approached the station I saw all of the apparatus sitting inside still. So I was really not thinking much was happening. The I walked inside and everything was a buzz. Come to find out there was a Mattrack pickup truck on fire on the sea ice about 12 miles north of town. It was reported fully involved by a helocopter that flew overhead. So the all call was to get personnel in the main station to fill in for the crews that were headed out to the sight to overhaul and begin cleanup on the vehicle.

So I took the officer position on Engine 1 and we had a blasting stand by for 30 minutes and then we were released shortly there after because enough A-shift personnel had shown up to cover all of the trucks. But needless to say, the fire vehicle was a total loss. But nobody was injured fortunatly.

So I have a few days off in a row now, so I will be doing some volunteer work around town. But as usual I will likely spend most of my time hanging around the station.

Talk to you soon. And let me know how you like the video.

R.J.

Yes, we are still here.

So I have been very delinquent about updating the blog and I have now received enough threats to be concerned that someone might actually come down here and beat me. But then again that isn't a huge threat since you likely wouldn't get a flight for a while if things continue as they have been.

Lets review what has been doing since Oct. 22nd. We have been working and the wind has been blowing. That pretty much sums it up. My secondary job at the Fire Department is the Vehicle Control Officer. This has consumed about 75% of my free time. I have been averaging about 30 hour shifts since I have been here. I am not complaining about that at all. Actually I spend most of my free time here at the station. I keep telling everyone that I have done this for free for the last 20 years, so being at the station even when I am not getting paid is nothing new for me.

For a streak of about two weeks, we had at least one and usually more vehicles out of service for various reasons. Actually one day it was so bad that we scheduled the tanker for service and the replacement pumper that we were going to use had a problem where the passenger door would not latch closed. So I took it up to the heavy shop to repair and they did not have a mechanic available and they did not have an empty bay to work in. So I stayed with the truck and took the door apart outside in -5F weather and repaired the latch. So, at this point I was feeling very good because I was able to actually fix something. I took the pumper back to the fire station to replace the tanker and as I pulled up front they stopped me and said that there was a major leak in the front line pumper and so the backup had to be used as the front line, and we had to live with the tanker as is. Just one thing after another.

In all actuality I really enjoy keeping busy on my day off. As far as being a firefighter, we have had 6 emergency calls on my shift since I have been here. The other shift has had 25. So the balance is certainly biased to A shift. I was the officer in charge of my first call about 2 hours ago. It was a reported smell of something burning in a dorm. It was not found and all was well. So fortunatly most of our calls have been little to nothing. We have had a few significant calls that then required medivac to Christchurch, but those are few and far between.

The last week has been very, very stormy. We have had condition 1 at the Ice Runway for many, many hours during the week. I spent Wednesday night out at Station 2 in condition 1 for about 9 hours. It is very impressive to be in a storm with continuous winds of 45 knots with snow. I have lots of photos and video of Condition 1 but I have none of them with me now. So that will have to wait for the next installment.

I have included some random photos from the shared directory. Enjoy.