Station 2

So I would have posted this yesterday, when I was working at Station 2, but I forgot my camera cord. I know, rookie mistake. Anyway, Station 2 is the mobile firehouse down here. I say mobile because it actually is on ski's. They move it out to the ice runway when the ice runway season opens up. The role of station 2 is essentially ARFF (Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting). The station is run 24/7, just like the other station here at the base. The responsibilities are essentially to the airfield and the surrounding "town", which consists of many other mobile trailer units.
"This is Downtown?"

The population out here is wicked small, and is mostly comprised of Air force personnel, Cargo and Fuel-ies (Jet Fuel attendants). Oh and 2-3 cooking staff. So the Fire Dept, all 6 of us out here on Station 2 shift, support everyone else.
The atmosphere is relaxed, but there are many more rules and regulations around here. That's due to the fact that we are actually on a living and fully functional airport/runway. Its crazy to hear the planes take off and land.

The control tower, located a quick 30 ft from our station, often calls us with landing updates and flight information.

Its certainly entertaining and different from anything else I've done in the fire service.

The commute to the airfield is usually around 20-30 minutes depending on weather and road/ice conditions. We have to drive past the Kiwi base and down onto the ice shelf itself. Don't worry the ice is very very very thick here.

We check out all of our airport fire apparatus. Which consists of: 1 Ambulance, 1 Nodwell, 1 Chieftain (Shout out to Dan Bedford the real "Chieftain"), and 2 Ford F-550's with mat-tracks.





Basically every piece of our apparatus is mat-tracked, due to the road conditions. After we inspect all of the vehicles, we usually do the station chores and look over the flight schedule. Mostly working at station 2 is a lot of stand-bys, unless there is a "in-flight emergency". Which I had the fortune of witnessing (yea, I know I'm a bad person, I'll talk about it later). During those said emergency's, we start up all of the apparatus, gear up, and go to our designated "hard stop" rally points. With the apparatus set up at these rally points it allows us to be able to quickly put agent or rescue the plane no matter where it goes down on the runway.

So yesterday, while I was getting trained by our Lt. with the rally points, we got a call from the tower informing us of a C-130 that had "an in-flight emergency" of one of the engine's breaking. The information that is relayed to us is how many people on board and how much fuel that the aircraft has, all of which plays a monumental impact on tactics. We were able to get to our rally points fairly quickly due to the fact that we all were driving around in our trucks anyway. Then we waited for the aircraft. The C-130 had its 3rd engine out, so it had 3 still functional engines. The plane landed w/o incident, and nothing really went bad with the landing. We were canceled once the plane made it onto the taxiway.
I learned so much during that call, and it was really exciting. After that we got to do a little haz-mat operations. Essentially everything is Haz-mat down here, so its not really that exciting. We were cleaning up anti-freeze, so we shovel it and the snow into a bag and bring it to the special "haz-mat" storage area. The Antarctica treaty is very serious about this whole process, and it makes sense. I mean this is a clean continent, with water and air most likely the purest on the earth. So, we should protect it.


The coolest feature of Station 2 is the "bubble" or observation area. One can sit up there, much like a WWII turret and have a 360 view of the entire airfield. YES, I did pretend I was in Episode 5 (ESB)/WWII for a solid hour...(sound effects and all). I mean I have to spend my downtime doing something. And it also helps that they have a swivel chair up there too/ Internet connection. I probably could spend hours watching planes and surfing the web. Of course, our crew watched movies/tv after the airfield closed. Really its not that bad of a gig. Some people hate station 2, I don't mind it at all. Everything is a quick walk, though the bathroom being in another trailer is annoying. Especially, if it isn't nice weather. Things are going great down here, and this is a great adventure. I'm going to enjoy my next 24 hours off, so talk to y'all later. Stay Safe.