He is a few of the things that we do here in the Antarctic Fire Department that are a little different from the norm in the average FD in the states.
- Hospital Attendant - As I write this entry I sit in the hospital across from a Russian man that was medivaced from a Russian ship to McMurdo for additional treatment and he will be flown north to Christchurch on Tuesday for treatment in the hospital there. We commomly provide EMT's and sometimes paramedics for night watch at the hospital. With the limited staff for the hospital here in McMurdo, they are only open during dayime hours. So if there is a emergency at night the on call doctor is paged by the firehouse dispatcher to report to medical. And when they have a patient that is admitted to the hospital they will ask for one of the firefighters to sit with the pt. while the doctor sleeps in the bedroom in the hospital. If something goes wrong I walk 50' and wake the doctor. Other than that, some vitals and assisting someone to the bathroom is about all we do.
- Animal Herding - OK, I have herded horses, and other animals back home with the FD, but never seals and penguins before. And never on a runway! I have yet to herd a seal, but I am told that they are very hard to get moving. Penguins on the other hand move easily, but not normally in the direction that you would like them to go.
- Crack Spackling - This we haven't done in a while. But in the early season we will go a spray water on the transition from the land to the sea ice to fill in tidal cracks or on the Ice Pier to fill in cracks that appear on that. When it is 0F the fresh water will fill in and freeze up the cracks nicely.
- Building Inspections - Not that uncommon for FD's in the states, but not something that I have done allot. We inspect each building on station every month. I is a very good way to become familiar with each building. We have a hugh advantage down here that most FD's don't have. We have a set number of buildings that we can respond to and we own all of them. So we have no excuse as to why we shouldn't know our way around all of them.
- Aircraft Stand-bys - Again I am sure that some FD's in the states do this, but it is not normal operation for the average department. We station a crew at Willy Field for the LC-130's that fly out of and stay at Willy for a large part of the season. That is normal operations for us. Also we staff Pegasus Airfield for scheduled C-17 missions as well as for emergency diverts and weather related diverts to Pegasus. So if we recieve a call for a emergency divert of a LC-130 to Pegasus then we have to mobilize a crew from Station 1 in town and we head to Pegasus ASAP. The best case scenario for us is 45 minutes to get to Pegasus. If the weather is bad, the roads are bad, or if we have any other problems the time goes up from there. We have had one emergency landing at Pegasus this season and there was no rush to get the plane on the ground. The problem that they had was that they had no flaps. So basically the brakes don't work. All went well and the plane used a large portion of the runway to stop, but they did without incident. We have also been to Pegasus several times for weather diverts. Pegasus is about 8 miles away from Willy and the weather can be much different at the two airfields. We make the run out there on the snow roads and then we sit and watch the 130 fly overhead and land at Willy most of the time. And yes this seems to commonly happen late at night.
- Follow Me - This involves a Ford Van and a C-17. The weight ratio is like 125:1, aka the C-17 would crush me like a tuna can. When the 17 lands the Fire Department mets it at the edge of the runway and provides a lead vehicle to take the aircraft into park. It is like being the pace car for a NASCAR race, but there is only one vehicle in the race and it weighs 10 times what a full field of racecars would and it has the potential to go much, much faster. Seriously, looking out the rear window of a Ford van and seeing a vehicle that is 5 stories tall moving towards you is a memory that one is not soon to forget.
- Airfield Control - Pegasus is an uncontrolled airfield. That means that there is no staffed air traffic control tower on site. So I, in said Ford van, act as Pegasus control. That means that I have to inspect the runway before the plane lands and then again before it takes off. We inspect for condition, animals, and any other problems that can occur that would be bad for a 585,000 pound airplane. Oh, and did I mention that since I have control of the runway you would think that I would be able to talk directly to the pilot in the plane; wouldn't you? Well no it doesn't work that way. I have to relay my message through Willy Field Tower to get to the plane. Sounds easy enough, right; well I can't reach Willy Field Tower from my location. I have to call the Firehouse on the radio, give them my message, they call Willy Tower and relay the message, and then Willy Tower calls the plane and relays the message to the pilots. So when a penguin pops out on the runway with the plane on final approach less than a mile out (this has happened this year already) you have to talk through several people to get the plane to divert. Sometimes things amaze me here.
So that is what I have in my head right now. The new position has been very interesting and I have been doing allot of new things. I have been seeing allot of things that I have never dealt with before in my Fire career. Both from the staffing point and the operations point of view. On the staffing side, I have been dealing with scheduling, performance reviews, hiring and travel. From the operations side I have been sitting in most every top level station meeting with both Raytheon management and with National Science Foundation and all other government agencies involved. Last week I also sat in on an orientation meeting for the station EOC (Emergency Operation Center). This meeting gave all of the new people on station that will be filling positions in the EOC for winter a chance to learn the system. The most interesting point of the meeting was when we were talking about formal multial aid agreements with foriegn countries. So I am now for the second time in my fire service career am working with forigen countries. Before they were to the south, and now they are all to the north.
Pretty Cool Stuff.
R.J.
