Dorm 201 - my summer home

My dorm room, stocked with books for winter, lounge, bathrooms, trash sorting categories and skua- 2nd hand goods bin, view from the dorm

McMurdo Film Festival- View from my Window

-not for sale or reproduction, thanks to producer, film from i drive

Antartic Fire Department Supply Line Debate

From: Bragg, Captain (Contractor) Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2010 12:56 AMTo: MCM-Firehouse-All: AFD Supply line survey

Below I have attached a document that I put together to try to help determine objectively what supply line should be carried and used by the AFD in the future. This is what I could put together quickly, please review it if you would and reply with any comments and/or corrections that you might have. I am looking for opinions and suggestions that will help with the process. As always 50 minds should be better than 1 looking at this. And I do have to thank Lt. Hinshilwood and FF/DO Walsh for the assistance and comments.

Please review and send me any comments by Tues. February 2nd.

Thanks.

Antarctic Fire Department Supply Line Survey
January 29, 2010

The selected maximum supply hose line length for these calculations is 1400’. This was selected based upon the distance from hydrant #4 at MMI to building 191 the Carpentry Shop. There are buildings in McMurdo that are further from a hydrant, but this is the furthest regularly occupied building from a water supply.

The calculations are based on available water flow from the hydrant. The ISO method shows a required fire flow of 2850 gpm for total involvement. So obviously the available water flow from the water system is the limiting factor. The latest hydrant flow data from hydrant #4 is 600 gpm. This data is from March of 2008 and the test was conducted with no additional pumping assistance from the water plant. Therefore, we could get 600+ gpm from this hydrant; the actual flow will require further testing.

With our current fleet in full operating condition we can support this operation at 600 gpm. It would require a dual 3” hose lay and an intermediate engine to relay pump to achieve this goal. Thing go down hill quickly at flows past 600 gpm.
Now jumping to a single lay 4” LDH we can expect some different results. At the 600 gpm flow rate, a single 1400’ line will be more than adequate. The limit for and 4” or 5” supply hose is 165 psi FL due to the maximum allowable pressure of an LDH of 185 psi and the required residual intake pressure of 20 psi. Using these numbers, you can see that the 4” hose begins to limit hose lengths at higher flows. At 800 gpm the maximum allowable length is 1300 feet. And at 1000 gpm the maximum allowable length is 900 feet.

And next with 5” single lay LDH we can expect even more distance and/or water flow. At flows up to 1000 gpm a 1400 foot line can be supported without any additional supply engines.

The other factor that I did not include in these calculations is elevation gain from hydrant #4 to building 191. The gain is approximately 80 feet, which equates to 40 psi of additional friction loss. This makes the 4” line a little sketchier in this example.

As I see it for the AFD there are several pros and cons for each type of supply line.
Pros:
Dual 3” – can be used with all existing adapters, hydrants, and hose.
– total weight of 50’ roll is 38 pounds.
LDH 4 or 5” – more water flow and/or longer lays with less apparatus.
– sexless coupling require no double male/female adapters.
Cons:
Dual 3” – high friction loss and limited flow/lengths.
– dual lays require additional coordination and setup.
LDH 4 or 5” – added expense of additional adapters and couplings.
– total weight of 100’ of 4” is 68 pounds and 5” is 84 pounds.

R.J. Bragg
Captain
Antarctic Fire Department

AFD Supply Line Debate Continues

Reply:

My fellow hose jockeys, through scientific studies, equations, and diagrams I will show you why smaller supply lines are in our favor rather than large diameter hose. Thank you to Walt the plumber and Kiwi Army Blackie & Nicole for their valued assistance.


To determine how much a hose line weighs we will complete the simple math equations to find out the specific weight of each hose diameter in question. In order to find the amount of water in a charged hose line we will use the Volume of a Cylinder Equation,
V = π x r² x h

V = Volume π = 3.14 r = Radius h = Height

First we must identity the characteristics of the hose in question.

5in Large Diameter Hose (LDH): π = 3.14 r = 2.5in h = 100ft

4in LDH: π = 3.14 r = 2in h = 100ft

3in: π = 3.14 r = 1.5in h = 100ft

All measurements must be converted to the same units to equate. Convert feet to inches.

Set up the problem for each hose diameter and solve.

V = 3.14 x 2.5² x 1200 = 23550in³

Using the cancellation table to cancel out all units, except the desired gallons.

V = 3.14 x 2² x 1200 = 15072in³

V = 3.14 x 1.5² x 1200 = 8478in³

Now water weighs roughly 8.33lbs/US Gallon. Figuring this and the weight of the hose will give us the total weight of the hose when full of water.

8.33 x 102 + 84 = 934 lbs for 5”
8.33 x 65 + 68 = 610 lbs for 4”
8.33 x 38 + 38 = 355 lbs for 3”

With temperatures regularly being below 32ºF/0ºC, the freezing point of water, it is common for hose lines in Antarctica to build ice accumulation. The ultimate question is this: would you rather try and maneuver the frozen 5” hose weighing 934 pounds or the 3” hose weighing only 355 pounds?

Conclusion: Frozen 3” is less than frozen 5” or 4” supply lines. Thank you.

(Courtesy of Lt Hardrick)

Castle Rock with cloud flowing over

Thanks to D on I drive for pic

Surely New Zealand is the best place in the world to make one's home...

R&R New Zealand

Surely New Zealand is the best place in the world to make one's home...

24 hr flight delay due to Con 4 weather!

28 hours til R&R in New Zealand!

Ice Stock 2010

sunny
winds ~30mph
temp 30 degrees

47 days til sunset
4 months til last sunset
8.5 months til first sunrise and arrival of Winfly personnel

Take my psych test next week and find out for sure if I'll winter or not!

At station 2- the ARFF station- today. It's a town holiday so there are no flights. Our only duties today are truck checks. The Pegasus shortcut road is closed (~8 miles), and no shuttles are running, so we borrowed a van with big tires and drove ourselves out at 1030 this morning. Tried for a land speed to Pegasus record yesterday.. but we were observed by watchers from LDB and trouble ensued. Being scrutinized very carefully this morning so 25 mph it is, and no faster. Hope to go out and see the old Pegasus crash.
Reading Polar Journeys, spending time online, calculating taxes, eating dim sum from brunch.

IceStock!

14 hours of live local bands. Stage set up outside from noon-1800 (interesting fact about adapting to Antarctica- I eat about twice as much as at home, my body temp was normal at 96.7 degrees at last check, and now I can stand around outside in jeans and a sweatshirt in 30-40 degree temps for 6 hours without getting cold. Aided by lots of coffee with baileys.)

Happy New Year from Antarctica!

Fire Team- Antarctic Softball Champions 2009!

The yearly softball tournament at The Ballfield (in outdoor cargo storage area).

4 teams- fire, carp shop, shuttles, et al

Fire is champion!

Only one injury this year!

34 degrees and partly cloudy

Joining the Antarctic Boxing Team!!!

Summer solstice-
2 months til sunset!

Time to do some shopping for Winter season...

Celestial Navigation

New York Air National Guard Lt Colonel Samantha East teaches a course on the rare science of celestial navigation

Small ice crack Weddell seal cub nuzzles against its mother

Pressure Ridges, cont.

Melt pool and Erebus Ice cave full of deep blue light

Looking south across Ross Ice Shelf towards White Island. Road flag on bamboo pole in foreground.

Peak of Mount Discovery visible above low cloud layer

More pics from Pressure Ridges

Scott Base in background:

The sun is out 24-7 but freeze-thaw cycles caused by overcast days and lower temperatures brought in by weather fronts form these icicles. In a week or two melting and crack formation will make it unsafe to travel through the pressure ridge area.

Castle Rock in left background (an old cinder cone). Mt Erebus looms in right background with its top covered in cloud and vented gases.

Easy three day weekend of reading, writing, and talking to friends back home...
At last, I have found the Elusive Bellydancing Class I Actually Have Time For!

Life in McMurdo

Every now and then this message will unexpectedly come over the radio:
“Attention all stations, this is the firehouse with an emergency announcement. Power conservation has reached a critical state! Activate your power reduction plan immediately. Again, power conservation critical - activate your power reduction plan immediately. Time now xx:xx.”
Translation: turn off all your lights, radios, and TVs, or everything's going to go black!
Until recently McMurdo station ran on several large generators. Last year a massive power-plant replacement project began and we were cut back to 2 generators (+ an outdoor "cat-in-the-box" backup generator) producing 1400kw or so for the town. Occasionally usage will exceed production capacity and unless effective power reduction measures are taken immediately, the generator dumps a feeder and a third of the town or so will be blacked out for a good while. On Sept 3rd, we came within 7kw of shutdown. I'm not sure, but I think 7kw equates to about 4 of those little space heaters people like to run in their rooms when it's neg 80 outside. At the last moment enough people got word to shut off unneccesary electrical draws and we avoided a mess. Life on the edge!
Last year a catastrophic failure occurred in one of the main generators. It stretched into a long and interesting hazmat/MCI/fire coverage event as skeleton fire crews raced back and forth between covering incoming flights and mitigating a big hazmat spill. The SCBA compressor choose this moment to give up the ghost, further complicating an already sticky situation.
Since Mainbody things have been running pretty well on the 2 main gen.s and the cat in the box. We still have "momentaries", as they say in Maine, as feeders are endlessly switched back and forth to allow preventative maintenance of the machinery.
It's been very cool to watch the erection of three windmills above the town on Crater Hill (also home to T-site, the off-limits communications/antennae array for the station). They've been blasting footings and assembling the structures for a couple weeks now. So far one is spinning and looks operational, a second's fully assembled, and a third is up but on delay due to some key parts arriving broken. I'd like to look into the special challenges involved in building on permafrost on a volcano and keeping such machinery working through huge temperature extremes, months of unfiltered UV radiation, and some of the strongest winds on Earth. When the wind-power project is complete it should meet all the electric needs of Scott Base and power 25-30% of McMurdo!
Along with the new windmills, a re-vamped power plant is currently being outfitted with another Six generators of similar capacity to the current ones. There used to be more than 2 generators, but apparently they were dissasembled and shipped away. Why we were left with inadequate power supply, and why we will have such an excess supply in the future are questions that occupy many a McMurdo mind on long, cold nights. Personally, I suspect that oil has been discovered in McMurdo Sound and refining operations will begin as soon as the Antarctic Treaty expires.
At least building on Ross Island is simplified by the fact that, although we're sort of part of the Ring of Fire, Ross Island sits over a hot spot very similar to Hawaii. Mt Erebus is a huge shield volcano- broad and wide with thin, flowing lava that really doesn't create explosive eruptions. Antarctica in general is one of the least seismically active places on Earth, so buildings and other structures don't have to be engineered to withstand quakes. That said, infrastructure in McMurdo is pretty old on average... a couple of roofs on residential buildings failed to stand up to the winds and snow last winter! One of the town's structurally unsound central buildings has been condemned this year and FD volunteers have just finished gutting it out in preparation for demolition. Sadly, it used to hold a bowling alley, pottery kiln, and bouldering cave.

You know it's windy in Antarctica when your snowmobile blows away...

Until the 1990's, McMurdo fire was run by the Navy. Firefighters lived in the firehouse and worked in the firehouse (and partied in the firehouse).

Still in love with out open-cab tanker in Antarctica...

Pressure Ridges

Visited the pressure ridges near Scott Base recently. Pics courtesy of Mike on I-Drive

The northern edge of the extensive, flowing Ross Ice Shelf is folded and broken up into beautiful ice ridges when it meets the shore of Ross Island.

Weddell seals use the areas of open water in the pressure ridges as breathing holes. They are the only mammals that venture far under the Ice Shelf, therefore they have few natural enemies. Most seal species live to forty years, but Weddells wear down their teeth by chewing the ice around their breathing holes to keep them open. After about twenty years their teeth are severly worn and they starve.

I.... am a Librarian

Excerpt from a neat book I found while working at the library. It's got a lot of crazy ideas and a couple good ones:



"Here’s an exercise to try at home….
Watch the second hand as it passes around the face of the clock. Picture the moment of your death, perhaps many decades into the future, or perhaps only a few years or months (who can know?). Wait for the second hand to reach the top of the clock face, then watch as it records the passing of one minute of your life. Now imagine the clock counting down the minutes of your life to the moment of your death. Try this exercise picturing this moment a few decades in the future, then repeat it picturing the moment next year. Repeat it picturing the moment of your death next month. Next week. Tonight. After all, you never know.
Now observe the minute and hour hands on the clock. What were you doing at this time twenty-four hours ago? Forty-eight hours ago? One month ago? What will you be doing at this time next week?
Imagine that the moment of your death is one month away. Consider- if you knew this was true, what would you be doing right now? What would you be doing at this time tomorrow? Repeat this step, imagining your death to be one year away. Does this make very much difference to your thoughts about what you would do today and tomorrow if you knew the date of your death?
Compare your activities over the last twenty-four hours to the activities you would have chosen if you had known you would leave this world in one month or one year. Compare your activities over the last month, the last year, the last decade, to those you would have chosen if you had known that on this day you only had thirty days or twelve months left to live. How different would your life have been if you had known the date of your approaching death? Would you be ready to die in a month or a year, having lived the life that you have?
Chances are… that most of the people who read this text and participate in this exercise will live for many more years afterwards. But, still, look at the second hand of the clock, and follow it as it records the passing minutes, counting down the minutes of your life that remain to you as they slip away. Are you living the life that you want to live? Are you living a life that, at any given moment, you could look back upon with satisfaction if you suddenly realized it was about to end? Are you living the sort of life that you would wish upon a human being, a life that is exciting and full, that is well spent, every minute of it? If the answer is no, what can you do in the time that still remains to you- however long or short that may be- to make your life more like the one you would like to live? For we all have a limited amount of time granted to us in this world- we should use it with this in mind.


...If you find, looking back upon your life, that you have spent years living without any consideration of your mortality, this is not really unusual, for our social/cultural environment does not encourage us to think much about the limits that nature places on our lives. Death and aging are denied and hidden away as if they were shameful and embarrassing. The older members of our society are hidden away in “retirement homes” like lepers in leper colonies. The billboards, magazines, photos, and television commercials that meet our eyes at every turn show only images of healthy men and women in the prime of their life. …When a man dies, the rituals which once would have celebrated his life and brought the subject of human mortality to those who survived him are now often regarded as mere inconveniences. …there is no time for death in today’s busy world of corporate mergers and record-breaking conspicuous consumption.
And indeed if we were to stop and ponder the subject, perhaps we would find that when we seriously consider the limits of our time on this planet, keeping up with the television comedies and having a good resume seem less important than they did before. Our cultural silence about human mortality allows us to forget how much weight the individual moments of our lives carry, adding up as they do to our lives themselves. Thus we squander countless hours watching television or balancing checkbooks, hours that in retrospect we might have better spent walking on the seashore with our loved ones, cooking gourmet meals for our children and friends, writing fiction, or hitchkiking across South America. The reality of our future death is not easy for any of us to come to terms with, but it is surely better that we consider this now than regret not doing so when it is too late.
Our denial of death has a deeper significance, beyond its function as a reaction to our fear of mortality and a selective blindness that helps us preserve the status quo. It is a symptom of our ongoing struggle to escape the cycles of change in nature and establish an unnatural permanence in the world. Our mortality is frightening evidence that we do not have control over everything; thus we are quick to ignore it, if we cannot do away with it altogether- a feat towards which our medical researches are working… it is worth questioning whether this would even be desirable.
Since the dawn of western civilization, men and women have hungered for the domination of not only the world and each other, but also for the domination of the seasons, of time itself. We speak of the eternal grandeur of gods and empires. And we design our cities and corporations to exist into infinity. We build monuments, spyscrapers, which we intend to stand forever as a testimony of our victory over the sands of time. But this victory can only come at a price, at this price; that though nothing passes away, nothing comes to be, either-that the world we create is a static, standardized place that can hold no surprises for us any more. We would do well to be wary of fulfilling our own darkest dreams by creating such a dystopia, a frozen world in which no one must fear death anymore, for everyone exists forever and no one lives for even an instant. "


-From Days of War, Nights of Love… Crimethink

Castle Rock crevasse deaths 1986

McMurdo search and rescue report, 23 November 1986:

"... The two entry sites into the crevasse were approximately 30' apart. Looking into the crevasse we could not see the bottom, nor was there any response when we tried to yell to the victims..."

"Once a rope to the first victim was established, (Mr.) Petty prepared to rappel down, and observed a repeated tugging on the rope from the victim below. On descent into the crevasses, it was noted that the crevasse width decreased from three feet at the top to approximately fifteen inches, seventy-five feet below the surface, where the victims were."

"Both had slid down the rock surface vertically, and appeared to be tightly wedged in... Petty (McMurdo medical) was the first to assess victim #1, and found him able to talk, although he appeared in a shocky state."

"Victim #2 was able to grab the end of the rope and coil it around his wrist, but was unable to hold on when it was pulled. His only words were to the effect "Get me out of here... I'm really in a mess, aren't I?"

"On victim #2... a final extrication attempt... we were able to secure a grappling hook under his arm for a fairly secure hold. With eight rescuers hauling on a 2:1 pulley system, the patient remained jammed, showing how tightly #2 was in fact jammed in..."

Both victims died in the crevasse accident. They had left the safety of the designated Castle Rock flagged route and had attempted to take a "short cut" to Scott Base (the New Zealand Base). A third member of the party was between the two when they dropped through the hidden snowbridge and into the crevasse. He crawled on his hands and knees to the flagged route, below the area known as the "Ice Fall" and ran to Scott Base, instigating the Search and Rescue (SAR) call-out.

SAR training all day today- pt treatment and packaging, communications, and ICS
Sea Ice training tomorrow...

everythings white and fresh and its sweatshirt weather after two days of snow

Just made the Winter SAR team!!!!


World map of photosynthesis

Sun night science lecture

Biogeochemistry in Antarctic waters

talk by a scientist conducting DNA sequencing and protein analyses of local phytoplankton in order to study the effect of nutrients and micronutrients on their growth.

Interesting points:
- important elemental nutrients used by phytoplankton: N, Fe, K, Si, Zn, Co
- some nutrients only come from bacterial processes- B12 for example. Guiness beer is rich in B12 due to its special bacterial populations.
- about 30% of the world's ocean surfaces are Fe-deficient
- polar regions are more likely to be Fe-deficent because much iron comes from windblown dust. Dust is in shorter suppply in mostly snow-covered areas such as Antarctica.
- Some Antarctic plankton "hot-bunk" iron. They use iron to build photosynthesis-related proteins during the day, then tear these proteins apart each night so that the same iron is available for alternative purposes. This allows the plankton to produce more in iron-limited conditions, though at a high energy cost.
- The metal hulls of scientific ships can throw off study measurements by artificially enriching the immediate vicinity with Fe from underwater rust
- underwater volcanic vents release metals and other nutrients which are carried away by currents, forming a plume pattern
- scientists theorize that global warming is being caused in part by excess carbon released into the atmosphere by human activities such as burning fossil fuels. One of the geo-engineering solutions suggested is to fertilize the oceans with iron, thereby causing a plankton bloom which will form a massive sink for atmospheric carbon (and eventually carry this carbon back into the rock cycle). Experimental fertilization attempts thus far have caused blooms visible from space for a month or more.

Saw my first puddle of liquid water in 2 months outside yesterday.

Sunday night science lecture

This week's science lecture featured SCINI - McMurdo's underwater ROV. The original SCINI was pioneered in 2003 using a grand total of $300 of off-the-shelf equipment, including sewer pipe, model helicopter propellers and toy racecar controls. The 2008 version of SCINI remains quite simple and cheap and has been repaired in settings such as inside a tent in a remote field camp. Including high tech cameras and navigational equipment, the newest SCINI is worth about $30,000 (typical for similar built-to-order ROVs). SCINI is 15cm wide, modular, and can travel at up to 4.5 knots to a depth of 300meters. Power and communication is provided by a tough tether with two ethernet (no delicate fiberoptics) cables.
SCINI's purposes include
1) providing a cheap and speedy way to evaluate possible scientific sites. Drilling, blasting, or melting holes large enough for divers can take several days. Local fluctuations in light, temperature, current, etc. can create undesirable nonrepresentative microenvironments. Winter Quarters Bay is very polluted; it contains more PCBs than LA harbor for example. Until 2003 raw masticated sewage was dumped into McMurdo Sound; the pile of sludge resting under the pipe is predicted to remain there for thousands of years before breaking down.
2)making deeper, longer dives than human divers can acheive. During the 1960's Dr Paul Dayton of the Scripps University conducted many experiments involving long-term growth observations of local sea life. These are known as the "Lost experiments" because many of them were below 40m, the current accepted maximum safe diving depth. SCINI can access these sites and collect decades worth of data. Long dives also make mapping of hard-to-access sub-ice areas possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k86Ns5VW_Ek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYsBc8_Rm2Q

good time at the halloween party last night...
went out to Cape Evans today and visited the hut that Scott and his party wintered in during 1910-1911 before they started on their fatal South Pole expedition. They set out on this very day- November 1 - 98 years ago. They reached the pole just after the rival Norwegian Amundsen expedition. The norwegian expedition made use of arctic standards such as skis and dogsleds, while Scott used a less effective combination mechanical sleds, manpower, and horses. On the way back Scott's party ran into rough weather and their progress was slowed. Starving and frostbitten, the team lost first one man to injuries and a then second who, near death, walked out into a storm rather than be a burden to the desperate team. The three surviving members of the original 5-man group hunkered down in their Scott tent through a storm at the end of March and never woke up again. Their bodies were recovered later that season.
There's a joke that goes: why did the English come to Antarctic?
Answer: to put up crosses.
Scotts hut was used as a refuge a few years later by some of Shackleton's men when their ship broke free and drifted away north in the pack ice. Above the hut on a hill is a cross dedicated to three members of the Shackleton expedition who died nearby. After 1917 the hut was buried under drifts until the 1950's, when it was dug out and its contents were found to be remarkably well preserved. The hut is 50' by 25', constructed of wood with a rubberized roof, and insulated with seaweed. A addition on the north side was built to house Scott's horses.
The hut's interior is dim and saturated with a smell of rancid seal meat that was strong enough to make me feel slightly nauseaus after a while. It included a large kitchen still stocked with boxes of flour and butter, cans of "pea flour" and preserved cabbage, and bags of cocoa. The hut was kept quite warm by a combination of acetylene, coal, and blubber burned in the kitchen stove and a second warming stove. The center of the hut held a long well-worn dining table, and its edges were lined by sleeping areas, storage, and benches covered with scientific equipment. At the huts rear was a 1911 era darkroom complete with necessary chemicals. Scott, the doctor, and an officer had semi-private sleeping quarters in a rear corner. The beds were short wooden platforms, still holding reindeer skin sleeping bags and surrounded by shelves of spare wool socks and sweaters. Scotts rough wool blankets looked a lot like the ones they gave me for my bed.
The wind and sun had dried the hut's exterior to a bleached white color. Scattered nearby lay the bones and skeletons of what seemed to be every dog and seal that had died in the vicinity. A couple of dogs were whole and mummified, one still attached to its chain.
From the hill above the hut I enjoyed the most beautiful view I've ever seen- looming Mt Erebus with its glacial tongue pushing out into the ice of the bay, sea ice bounded by high ice cliffs stretching north, permanent surface of the Ross Ice shelf stretching south, and the tall rugged Royal Society Range across the bay. All was painted in the array of blue, purple, yellows, white, and orange light peculiar to the Antarctic.
On the Delta ride to the Hut we stopped and got out to look at some penguins standing half a mile from us. To our surprised delight as soon as they saw our 21 member group they waddled over to within a few feet of us and checked us out. When they got close enough their yellow necks identified them as Emperors. They slid around on their bellies some and made that funny lonely call that penguins make. I'll have to try and get some of Docs pictures of the event. They had a good look at our Delta then continued on across the road.
Our final stop was an ice cave created by the interaction of seawater with the Erebus ice tongue. It was very beautiful, filled with intricate ice crystals and deep blue light.