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

More Training

Well we have had the weekend off from Firefighting. So we had to find some different training to do while in SLC. Several people have rented cars and we have gone off in different directions. A group went off to Park City to mountain bike and hike. Another group went and rode the bobsled track. And a group of us went to the Kennecott Utah Copper Mine. This is the largest open pit copper mine on the planet. It once was a mountain that was 9000' tall and now it is an open pit that is a mile deep.



The little dots that you see on the far side of the photo here are actually Caterpillar Dump Trucks that have 12' tall tires and can carry 120 tons in one load.





This is one of the shelf excavations that they are currently working on. We could see three different excavations that we working while we were there. I would have to guess that there were 80 or 90 dump trucks working while we were there.



So after dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (what a crappy meal!) we decided that we should continue our training and do some driver training. This came in the form of an indoor road race go kart track.









The races are 10 minutes long each, and the carts are very fast. Much better than your average karting track. I had the fastest lap on the most of the laps, but Joe beat me for the fastest overall lap time by a hunderedth of a second.

So that was our weekend training. On Monday we will be at the training center for the morning doing more blackboard scenario training as well as more turret operations in the Stryker crash trucks. After that we have the afternoon off and we will be doing night time incident scenarios from 7PM to Midnight. So we should get in another 3 or 4 full scale scenarios. Of these I will likely act as Incident Commander for one of these. And then hopefully I can get a crew and be part of the interior operations for the others.

On my last scenario in the inside of the Tuna Can we had a very good stressful operation. I had a crew of two plus myself. I took the backup position on the hoseline and so I had a nozzleman in front of me and a hose hauler behind me. We entered the right side of the aircraft on the overwing door with no obvious fire fore or aft. And since our priority was to get to the flight deck to rescue the crew we headed to the front of the aircraft. Well once we made the turn and got 6 feet into the aisle the instructors lit us up good. We had very heavy fire on both sides of us and it was getting warm quickly. The nozzleman quickly turned and opened the nozzle to fight the fire. Well as any of you who have done interior firefighting know, the line will get hung up at the worst time. When Randy had turned to fight the fire the line got kinked and wedged itself into the seats. I was trying to pull the line back and get us out of there ASAP. And I quickly realized that the line wasn't coming with me and at the same time the fire was banked down to our helmet level. So as I reached for and grabbed Randy by the airpack straps the instructor did the same thing and we yanked him out of the aisle and back to a safe location. As soon as he let go of the handline it straighted out and the hangup was gone.

So after we regrouped in a safe area we got the handline back in operation and knockdown the fire. And we advanced towards the flight deck again. And of course once we got into the aisle again they lit us up again. This time we were far enough forward to make it to the front door and turn around to suppress the fire. Once the fire was knocked we made one rescue in the flight deck and passed the victim on to the Rescue Team. And of course we had a flare up in the front while we were there. These instructors really like to beat up on people.

Once we got all of the fires suppressed in the cabin we suddenly had heavy smoke coming from the kitchen area. So we had to advance to the front again to check it out. Once there we found out that the fire was coming from the lower deck of the aircraft. So we had to back out of the cabin and off of the aircraft to gain access to the lower deck. Once outside the Rescue crew had the lower deck door open and we suppressed the fire inside, and of course the instructors started a ground fire right at the front of the plane where we were operating. So our crew started working on the ground fire when I was notified that we were down to 300 gallons of water left on the truck. So I then had to pull back the crew out of the hot zone. That is a tough assignment to carry out. Tell a crew of FF's to back away from a roaring fire. You need a leash to do it.

So as you can see they are very good at challenging a team and I found it very rewarding to have so many things thrown at me as the crew leader. A nice way to test my skills.

Ok, now it is time for bed. I have to get ready for tomorrows drills.

Until next time.
R.J.

ARFF, ARFF, ARFF!!!

Ok, I was going for a dog barking effect on the title there. A little weak, but what do you expect from me at this point.

ARFF, for those of you that don’t know what that stands for is Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting. It is very much like structural firefighting, just with more flammable liquids and inside a tuna can. Plus we get much more stylish turnouts than structural firefighters.



So here at Salt Lake City ARFF training center we have a full programmable propane aircraft crash simulator. This means that an instructor in the tower can start any fire at any time on the simulator. They can have ground fires all around the aircraft, engine fires, landing gear fires, cabin fires in multiple locations, under cabin fires, and smoke throughout the cabin area. All of this means basically that once you have extinguished a fire in one area and moved on, the instructor can, and most often will restart the fire after you have passed, or start another fire behind you. Thus you are now trapped in said tuna can and you now have to fight your way out.



They have two very new Oshkosh Stryker 3000 ARFF trucks. Imagine a six wheel drive, fully independent suspension, four wheel steering tanker with 3000 gallons of water, class B foam, 600 pounds of dry chemical agent, and a really cool front bumper turret.



So I arrived to SLC on Sunday night and class began on Monday morning at 8:30. We had a 20 minute safety lecture, an hour of gear fitting, and by 10AM on Monday morning I was driving and operating the turret on live fire with Crash 8. What a way to start a 10 day class!!!!



Since then we have been doing interior firefighting and search and rescue as well as exterior firefighting with dual agent and foam. Dual agent is dry chemical and water or foam mixed. The nozzle has a straight tip in the center for the dry chemical to exit and the water is a fog nozzle surrounding the center straight tip. The purpose for the dual agent application is for the reach of the water stream with the knock down of the dry chemical.



And for almost all of the remaining days we will be doing actual scenarios with interior and exterior operations. And so I will be acting in my capacity as a Lieutenant for the remainder of the time. This means that I will be a crew leader and likely I will be Incident Commander for an evolution or two.

That is all for now. I have to go to dinner with the two Captains and the two other Lieutenants now.

Don’t I get any credit for spelling Lieutenant correctly without even using spell check???
R.J.