Things are getting more solid and real by the day. As well as having flights booked next month for the Denver training and then on to New Zealand, I now have been assigned a hotel in Christchurch starting on the 24th of January - the Windsor B&B. The Windsor is a large old house near the city center that has been converted into a hotel. I'm sure it was chosen by my employers for its economy, but it is exactly the kind of place I would chose no matter what my housing budget. I'll be there at least two days.
The NZ office of the USAP has sent me a schedule for my two days in Christchurch - how to get around, where and when to be fitted for my cold weather gear, where to meet shuttles, and the date for my ICE flight. If the weather cooperates I will be on the ice exactly one month from today, January 26. Unfortunately being "on the ice" isn't the same as being at the Pole. Several days will have to be spent in the mud pit that is McMurdo Station where they will give me survival training (and yet another dental exam). Then onward to the clean ice of the Amundsen-Scott Station.
I've started preliminary packing. Baggage weight for flights into McMurdo and to the Pole is limited to 150 lbs of personal gear. This includes the ten pounds of extreme cold weather gear issued at the USAP Clothing Distribution Center in Christchurch. My ECW will be closer to 20 lbs because South Pole winterovers are issued two complete sets so that one can be stored in a remote building in case of a main-station fire. I don't think I will have any real problem with the weight limit even with the 20 lbs of gear but we will see. I'm an experienced traveler so I probably could get all my clothes for the winter in a carry-on bag. I'm not sure how I will even fill up two huge duffels. Food, alcohol, chocolate and an Xbox maybe.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Getting close
It isn't long now - just over 30 days. My flights are booked and my tickets cut. I leave for Denver orientation on January 17th and then on to the Pole. My ICE flight (where I actually reach Antarctica) is scheduled for the 26th into McMurdo Station from Christchurch, New Zealand. That flight will be on a C-17 military transport. The flight to the Pole a few days later will be on a ski-equipped C-130.
In the meantime I have been busy cleaning up around the house for a year's absence, installing security lights, shopping for cameras and other personal things, building a carport, and arranging for lawn-mowing and mail-forwarding services.
There is only one more training session after the fire-fighting and emergency responder training - Survival School. That is done in Antarctica under real conditions. After some classroom instruction they will drive us out onto the ice sheet and teach us how to build ice shelters (igloos!) and dig survival trenches... and then they make us sleep in them overnight! Luckily I will be there at the end of January, which is the warmest month. Temperatures for my night out should stay above zero.
Although I have known I am going to the South Pole for months, it adds quite a dose of reality to have flights scheduled.
In the meantime I have been busy cleaning up around the house for a year's absence, installing security lights, shopping for cameras and other personal things, building a carport, and arranging for lawn-mowing and mail-forwarding services.
There is only one more training session after the fire-fighting and emergency responder training - Survival School. That is done in Antarctica under real conditions. After some classroom instruction they will drive us out onto the ice sheet and teach us how to build ice shelters (igloos!) and dig survival trenches... and then they make us sleep in them overnight! Luckily I will be there at the end of January, which is the warmest month. Temperatures for my night out should stay above zero.
Although I have known I am going to the South Pole for months, it adds quite a dose of reality to have flights scheduled.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Further Progress
I just heard from RPSC and they have moved my deployment date up to the week of January 18th. That means it is now less than 60 days before I leave for the South Pole.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Fire Training Update
I found a picture of the firefighters' halligan. This versatile tool is a combination pry-bar, adze, hook, ax, and reach-extender and was invented by (you guessed it) Hugh Halligan of the NYFD, and is now used by firefighters worldwide. It is also useful because when crawling along the floor on hands and knees it the two prongs on the end form a raised triangle that keeps the fire-fighter's hand off the floor. If the hand holding the halligan ever touches the floor the firefighter knows there is no floor ahead. Very useful knowledge to keep from going headfirst into a hole or stairway in pitch black conditions. As I found out, this thing is heavy steel and weighs about 10-15 lbs. - much heavier than an ax. Using one increases equipment weight for the average firefighter to about 70 lbs!Saturday, October 10, 2009
South Pole Firefighter Training
I spent the past week at the Rocky Mountain Fire Academy in Aurora, Colorado training for the South Pole Station Fire Brigade. Apologies for not posting during the week, but you would not believe the stuff I was doing. I was exhausted every day. Every muscle in my body ached all week and I have a new respect for firefighters - the things they do are HARD.
Monday, in just one exercise, we crawled through a "burning" building (simulated smoke but zero visibility) on hands and knees sweep-searching for victims. In this case the scenario was "an infant reported to be in the building". As we discovered there was also an unexpected adult victim. My partner and I had to extract both (we always go in two-person teams). All this was done with 65 lbs of bunker gear, helmet, face-piece and self-contained breathing apparatus. It was all I could do to crawl out of the building with the baby under my arm, hand it (him?) off and collapse. The smoke was so thick in the building that at one point I could not find the open exit door when I was only a foot from it! I shouldn't admit it, but I probably dragged the "baby" out by the neck. Luckily there aren't supposed to be any babies at the Pole, but anything is possible.
And this was just one exercise of a 5-day course. On the last day we all had to sweep-search for victims and put out a fire in a live-fire exercise. You can see the remnants of the fire in the picture to the left. I cannot say I was looking forward to the search part since searching is hard enough without real fire (putting the fires out is a lot of fun though). In the end all went well in my fire-attack but my sweep-search could have been better. By the way, "could have been better" is a euphemism for "terrible". On the second floor searching for victims I got confused in the smoke and did not search the entire room. As a result I left the room early and missed the victim (a bright orange traffic cone) which was behind a door.
The one thing I was not worried about was getting burned. On the first day we had been taken into the fire building in full gear while the trainers set fire to a pile of wooden pallets next to us. Thankfully all we had to do was crouch on the floor in the relatively cool air and listen to a short ten-minute lecture.. The lecture they gave in that room took on new meaning when there was a raging fire ten feet away and the smoke/air interface was dropping by the minute. By the end of the lecture the fire had turned into a raging inferno and the smoke had dropped to about 18 inches off the floor and was so dense we couldn't even see the fire ten feet away (but we could sure feel the heat)! We were in full bunker gear and bottled air of course. The firefighters told us that five feet above the floor the temperature was about 1,000 degrees, and if any of us were to stand up the heat would melt our face masks. Needless to say we all crawled out the door on hands and knees after the lecture.. I've learned that firefighters spend most of their time on hands and knees. As we were crawling out another firefighter warned us not to remove our gear for a few minutes because it was too hot to touch!
On one of the non-fire mornings we crawled down the Gerbil Tube - 80 feet of eighteen-inch diameter concrete sewer pipe - to learn how to negotiate tight situations. It was so tight we could only propel ourselves with our toes. Later that day we squirmed, crawled and scooted back and forth and up-and-down through a building called The Maze (which I tended to think of more as the Building from Hell) that had a complex multi-level wooden stud structure built throughout (complete with the occasional hanging electrical wire) to simulate a tight attic space - all in complete darkness with full kit and SCBA. On other days we learned forced-entry techniques using a halligan and ax, practiced extinguishing vehicle-fires (left), propane tank fires, extracting victims from cars, etc. Whew, it was quite a week of exhausting training and the thin air of Denver didn't help much.
Monday, in just one exercise, we crawled through a "burning" building (simulated smoke but zero visibility) on hands and knees sweep-searching for victims. In this case the scenario was "an infant reported to be in the building". As we discovered there was also an unexpected adult victim. My partner and I had to extract both (we always go in two-person teams). All this was done with 65 lbs of bunker gear, helmet, face-piece and self-contained breathing apparatus. It was all I could do to crawl out of the building with the baby under my arm, hand it (him?) off and collapse. The smoke was so thick in the building that at one point I could not find the open exit door when I was only a foot from it! I shouldn't admit it, but I probably dragged the "baby" out by the neck. Luckily there aren't supposed to be any babies at the Pole, but anything is possible.
And this was just one exercise of a 5-day course. On the last day we all had to sweep-search for victims and put out a fire in a live-fire exercise. You can see the remnants of the fire in the picture to the left. I cannot say I was looking forward to the search part since searching is hard enough without real fire (putting the fires out is a lot of fun though). In the end all went well in my fire-attack but my sweep-search could have been better. By the way, "could have been better" is a euphemism for "terrible". On the second floor searching for victims I got confused in the smoke and did not search the entire room. As a result I left the room early and missed the victim (a bright orange traffic cone) which was behind a door.
The one thing I was not worried about was getting burned. On the first day we had been taken into the fire building in full gear while the trainers set fire to a pile of wooden pallets next to us. Thankfully all we had to do was crouch on the floor in the relatively cool air and listen to a short ten-minute lecture.. The lecture they gave in that room took on new meaning when there was a raging fire ten feet away and the smoke/air interface was dropping by the minute. By the end of the lecture the fire had turned into a raging inferno and the smoke had dropped to about 18 inches off the floor and was so dense we couldn't even see the fire ten feet away (but we could sure feel the heat)! We were in full bunker gear and bottled air of course. The firefighters told us that five feet above the floor the temperature was about 1,000 degrees, and if any of us were to stand up the heat would melt our face masks. Needless to say we all crawled out the door on hands and knees after the lecture.. I've learned that firefighters spend most of their time on hands and knees. As we were crawling out another firefighter warned us not to remove our gear for a few minutes because it was too hot to touch!
On one of the non-fire mornings we crawled down the Gerbil Tube - 80 feet of eighteen-inch diameter concrete sewer pipe - to learn how to negotiate tight situations. It was so tight we could only propel ourselves with our toes. Later that day we squirmed, crawled and scooted back and forth and up-and-down through a building called The Maze (which I tended to think of more as the Building from Hell) that had a complex multi-level wooden stud structure built throughout (complete with the occasional hanging electrical wire) to simulate a tight attic space - all in complete darkness with full kit and SCBA. On other days we learned forced-entry techniques using a halligan and ax, practiced extinguishing vehicle-fires (left), propane tank fires, extracting victims from cars, etc. Whew, it was quite a week of exhausting training and the thin air of Denver didn't help much.
And the best part is I was actually paid to do this! I can't say I was the best in the class, but I held my own - particularly when you realize that most of the other students were 20 to 30 years younger than me. I'd like to take the course again, but I'll prepare myself better in advance next time.
110 days to the Pole!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wilderness Emergency Responder Training
Ok, since one of my three readers has complained I'm not posting fast enough here is what is happening so far in Denver.
CISM, Critical Incident Stress Management: This one-day course was not an auspicious start to the two weeks of training. Eight hours of lecture about potential psychological issues for winter-overs at the Pole and what to look out for. Useful and mildly interesting but I became concerned this was going to be a very long two weeks until day two arrived with ...drumroll...
Wilderness First Responder Training! WOW! What a great course! After a few hours of interesting and humorous lecture we broke into small groups and moved outside for simulated incident scenarios. Some of us played victims (complete with fake blood and bruise make-up, a list of symptoms, behavior and complaints) while the others evaluated the situation and treated us on the spot. We learned how to complete head-to-toe evaluations, do chunk evaluations when time is of a premium, how to identify spinal injuries and immobilize the patient, to evaluate LOR (Level of Responsiveness), how to remove victims from awkward situations without causing additional harm, and how to give CPR. And this was just the first day!
The remaining days were spent learning and practicing things like how to stop arterial bleeding, splint broken bones, apply traction splints and SAM splints, what to ignore (because they are beyond first responder's abilities to treat), how to report correctly to a remote medical professional, and how to identify and treat hypothermia. Of course all was oriented toward doing this in sub-zero temperatures. We even had to wear mittens for some scenarios. Trust me, taping a patient's head to a backboard while wearing mittens is no easy task.
For three days the hotel parking lot looked like a small disaster area. Victims were laying in the parking lot, in ditches, over rocks and under trees with teams running back and forth. Face up, face down, curled up, conscious, unconscious, fake blood, occasional screams and combativeness. Not to mention practicing carrying victims in a litter across parking lots, up and down stairs and through halls and doorways. Once, after a scenario, I was loading a backboard and kit bag into an elevator when a guest asked me if there was an emergency in the hotel.
I'm going to give a plug for the instructor of this course, Mark Crawford of the Wilderness Medical Institute. Mark is the perfect trainer for this course having been a career Air Force SAR team member and combat parajumper. Every bit of theory in this course was backed up with real-life stories about situations he has experienced, including mistakes and successes. There were two EMT's in our group and they seemed in awe of Mark. If you need emergency responder training at any level, including for physicians, WMI are the people to call. http://www.nols.edu/wmi/
Now on to Firefighter Training which will start Friday. They say that is the really fun course. If it's any better than this I'm not leaving Denver.
Days to the Ice: 122
CISM, Critical Incident Stress Management: This one-day course was not an auspicious start to the two weeks of training. Eight hours of lecture about potential psychological issues for winter-overs at the Pole and what to look out for. Useful and mildly interesting but I became concerned this was going to be a very long two weeks until day two arrived with ...drumroll...
Wilderness First Responder Training! WOW! What a great course! After a few hours of interesting and humorous lecture we broke into small groups and moved outside for simulated incident scenarios. Some of us played victims (complete with fake blood and bruise make-up, a list of symptoms, behavior and complaints) while the others evaluated the situation and treated us on the spot. We learned how to complete head-to-toe evaluations, do chunk evaluations when time is of a premium, how to identify spinal injuries and immobilize the patient, to evaluate LOR (Level of Responsiveness), how to remove victims from awkward situations without causing additional harm, and how to give CPR. And this was just the first day!
The remaining days were spent learning and practicing things like how to stop arterial bleeding, splint broken bones, apply traction splints and SAM splints, what to ignore (because they are beyond first responder's abilities to treat), how to report correctly to a remote medical professional, and how to identify and treat hypothermia. Of course all was oriented toward doing this in sub-zero temperatures. We even had to wear mittens for some scenarios. Trust me, taping a patient's head to a backboard while wearing mittens is no easy task.
For three days the hotel parking lot looked like a small disaster area. Victims were laying in the parking lot, in ditches, over rocks and under trees with teams running back and forth. Face up, face down, curled up, conscious, unconscious, fake blood, occasional screams and combativeness. Not to mention practicing carrying victims in a litter across parking lots, up and down stairs and through halls and doorways. Once, after a scenario, I was loading a backboard and kit bag into an elevator when a guest asked me if there was an emergency in the hotel.
I'm going to give a plug for the instructor of this course, Mark Crawford of the Wilderness Medical Institute. Mark is the perfect trainer for this course having been a career Air Force SAR team member and combat parajumper. Every bit of theory in this course was backed up with real-life stories about situations he has experienced, including mistakes and successes. There were two EMT's in our group and they seemed in awe of Mark. If you need emergency responder training at any level, including for physicians, WMI are the people to call. http://www.nols.edu/wmi/
Now on to Firefighter Training which will start Friday. They say that is the really fun course. If it's any better than this I'm not leaving Denver.
Days to the Ice: 122
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Emergency Response Training
138 Days to the Ice
Things are starting to move along. My pre-deployment emergency response training in Denver will start in 10 days and I have learned what its components will be:
Critical Incident Stress Management Training: 1 day
Trauma Team Training: 3 days
Fire Brigade Training: 5 days
OSHA Training: 1 day
Raytheon Orientation*: 2 days
*Raytheon Orientation is normally given immediately before deployment, so that part may be postponed until nearer my deployment date in February. Still, it's going to be a busy two weeks.
Things are starting to move along. My pre-deployment emergency response training in Denver will start in 10 days and I have learned what its components will be:
Critical Incident Stress Management Training: 1 day
Trauma Team Training: 3 days
Fire Brigade Training: 5 days
OSHA Training: 1 day
Raytheon Orientation*: 2 days
*Raytheon Orientation is normally given immediately before deployment, so that part may be postponed until nearer my deployment date in February. Still, it's going to be a busy two weeks.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
New Style
I'm changing my blog's style as you can see. I don't think flower anthers really fit an Antarctica blog so I'm working on changing the header image. Be patient - it isn't a simple JPG sitting up there that I can switch.
[Update] Aha! Changed to a Pole panorama.
[Update] Aha! Changed to a Pole panorama.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Live Cam at the Pole
RETURN OF LIVE PICTURES - The live web cam at the South Pole Station is operational again today after being off-line for the winter. Above is a view taken 9 September. I can’t believe that’s daylight so soon. I’ll check with my Polie friend when satellite communication is available later today. Note the line of flags that guides people to and from the main station year-round when ground level visibility is poor. This photo is taken from an atmospheric research building in the Clean Air Sector (you can see the building as a tiny dot at the far left of the sidebar aerial photo).
Current SP temperature -89F, wind at 10 mph. Wind chill -126F.
[Update] Haven't heard from the Pole yet but I think this really is daylight at the Pole! Sunrise is September 21, only 12 days away, so this is pre-dawn light coming from the Sun circling just below the horizon. I bet there are a bunch of excited Polies right about now.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Outfitting an Expedition
THE ECONOMICS OF SHOPPING - Few of us do all our shopping in one huge super-market trip once a year, but that is exactly what has to happen when you spend a winter at the Pole. Yes, meals are supplied, but only in the cafeteria, and as well-prepared as they might be it is still rather institutional. For example, cafeteria cheeses are probably that cheese-like orange stuff called “cheddar” that comes in extruded cubes or the stuff called Parmesan you shake out of a green container. As an American I was practically raised on all that but I also know there is better. Much better.
So, the nicer things in life that make it all bearable are not supplied at the Pole - like really good tea and coffee. Or skin moisturizer (required in the ultra-dry conditions), or really good chocolate. As I have found out, eight and a half months of anything is a lot of stuff. For example:
- A mere 1.5 oz of cheese a day is 24 lbs 0f cheese in eight and a half months! Since one 7 pound wheel of a medium quality Manchego cheese costs $125 that's over $450!
- One 1 ounce drink of single malt scotch per day = 1.1 bottles per month. Which is 9 times $60 (cheap scotch!) or $540.
- Heck, even one bag of Dorritos a week equals 34 bags of Dorritos, $70!!!
And what else do I want to take for eight months? Espresso coffee ($150), Earl Grey tea ($150), good chocolate - two bars/week turns into 68 bars ($210), 8.5 months of skin moisturizers ($200), batteries ($200), WOW! This is like outfitting an EXPEDITION!
145 day to the Pole
145 day to the Pole
