So we’ve been here for 2 months now and things are finally coming together. It’s tough to jump straight in and do a job when everyone comes from a different style of fighting fire and different background. But we train a lot and are starting to come together as a department.

To give you some background on the department we are a full time 24 on 24 off crew with 12 during the austral winter (Feb – Aug) and around 50 during the summer. We run out of 1 station in town year round and a second station in the summer at our snow runway with a crew of 6 (This is usually flights from the South Pole.). We also cover with a crew of 6 at our Ice runway when we have incoming planes from New Zealand. The only mutual aid we have is the fire brigade from Scott base which is the New Zealand base about 1 mile away. They are a great crew we spend a lot of time with them both training and bull shiting. We run a 4 man engine, 2 Man tanker, 2 Man ambulance, and a command unit during the summer, winter we run a 2 to 4 man engine(Depending on staffing) and a command unit. We rely on the off duty crews to come in and take tanker if we have a fire call and the on duty crew takes the bus if it’s an EMS call. Strategy differs a great deal down here since we have a department of 11 with one being our dispatcher and on the IC that gives us 9 to fight fire and you have to have a D/O or engineer so now 8. Search and rescue as well as offensive attacks can only be done if immediate life safety of property conservation can be saved. The thought of most of us down here is that we are trained to go in and knock it down but if its to far advanced we can because these structures are worse than those in the states and will collapse quicker so time is more crucial here than ever. Now luckily we don’t get fires as a rule. A warming shack burnt last year and a dryer fire in august 08 but that’s it for the most part which is great. I love fighting the beast and doing my truck work as much as the next guy but in this environment, staffing and poor structures I’m glad we don’t have fires.

Now to give you the basic weather conditions we deal with on a regular basis. Once mid-April hits the sun will go down and stay down until around mid-august and temps will stay below 0F with wind chills at -30F min. all through march it has been like any other day the sun rises around 7am and sets around 8pm February was a different story it was sunlight 24/7 which is a little weird to get use to at first but temps were around +15 to +20F with wind chills at 0F we were out in t-shirts and shorts. With these temps it’s really hard to keep the equipment from freezing. Every time the trucks roll out of the station we have to turn on the generator and set the pump when parked so the pump doesn’t freeze. Couplings freeze very quick as do nozzles, so to fix this we keep them as close to the exhaust pipes as we can when not in use so the heat can thaw them out. You also have to really watch where we put water on the ground because unlike in the states we can’t just call the salt trucks and it’s taken care of. Once it’s there it’s there and we put dirt on it but that can only do so much.

So enough rambling for now

Stay safe from all of us at AFD McMurdo

Mike Lintz
Antrctic Fire Dept
McMurdo Staion
Bldg 182 x2555