Everyone on the winter crew has to decide to be on the fire brigade or on the trauma team because in such extreme isolation we have to relay solely on the training and strengths of the crew, there is no evacuation or any possible transportation for about nine months.
I decided I would be part of the fire brigade because crew members on the fire brigade need to remain clean shaven throughout the entire year (easy for me and most people like to grow their beards for warmth in the winter).
Fire training is at the Denver Fire Academy for an entire week. The first day we were issued "bunker gear", boots, and a SCBA harness. We learned how to correctly don the gear which includes a flash hood, jacket, pants, boots, mask, harness, air bottle, and gloves as modeled by the other Research Associate (RA) here.
We completed a multilevel crawling maze made from 2''x4''s in a shipping container in full gear without air bottles, general hand tool usage, forcing entry, and the "worm hole" crawl. The worm hole is a long pipe that starts at about three feet in diameter and shrinks to sixteen inches. This is a requirement to graduate from the Denver Fire Academy (not necessary for us, but why not try it?). At sixteen inches you can't crawl, it is more of a toe push and elbow shuffle for the last five sections of pipe.
We also learned search and rescue techniques and rescue drags. We did a short obstacle course which includes two roughly 1'x1.5' rectangles and a pipe which we navigated in full gear on air. Being on air with limited visibility makes the feeling of claustrophobia a little more heightened but I completed it successfully.
We learned the fire prevention and safety capabilities of the station and what our actions and responsibilities are in regards to station and aircraft fire fighting. There will be weekly fire training session and monthly fire drills as well as a mass casualty incident drill twice a year.
We covered different kinds of fires and how to approach them, ventilation, flow path and many other things. We practiced putting out several fires with extinguishers and discussed different scenarios.
Interesting fact: There are only ten LC-130 planes in the world and they all belong to the US Antarctic Program. These are the largest planes in the world to be outfitted with skis. In 1973 a LC-130 crashed at the South Pole, it is buried at the end of the skiway (ice runway), everyone survived.
I decided I would be part of the fire brigade because crew members on the fire brigade need to remain clean shaven throughout the entire year (easy for me and most people like to grow their beards for warmth in the winter).
Fire training is at the Denver Fire Academy for an entire week. The first day we were issued "bunker gear", boots, and a SCBA harness. We learned how to correctly don the gear which includes a flash hood, jacket, pants, boots, mask, harness, air bottle, and gloves as modeled by the other Research Associate (RA) here.
We learned the fire prevention and safety capabilities of the station and what our actions and responsibilities are in regards to station and aircraft fire fighting. There will be weekly fire training session and monthly fire drills as well as a mass casualty incident drill twice a year.
We covered different kinds of fires and how to approach them, ventilation, flow path and many other things. We practiced putting out several fires with extinguishers and discussed different scenarios.
Interesting fact: There are only ten LC-130 planes in the world and they all belong to the US Antarctic Program. These are the largest planes in the world to be outfitted with skis. In 1973 a LC-130 crashed at the South Pole, it is buried at the end of the skiway (ice runway), everyone survived.
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