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.