May 2011 -

28 May

Safety training

My training has continued… I have now been certified for first aid and CPR, to ride an ATV, and yes, to exit underwater aircraft. I did not expect these trainings when I was signing up for a job in communications, even if it is communicating in Alaska. But I guess it is Southeast Alaska, the Panhandle, which is mostly made up of islands. Sitka, where I am living, and will be for the next six months, is on one of the three largest islands, the ABCs. Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagoff. (Sitka is on Baranof. Baranof was in charge of the Russian American Company, way back when.) To go anywhere involves going over water, by boat or plane, and thus all the safety training.

Hypothermia you can go read about on your own, and you can take the same standardized first aid and CPR training anywhere in the country, but I bet you can’t get the underwater egress training, so I’ll talk about that one.

The training was run by Dug Jensen, who also did most of the water and survival trainings on the previous days. For this one, he also brought in a retired Coast Guard pilot and helicopter mechanic. We watched a video, and learned things like if a plane (including float planes) has its landing gear down when it hits the water, the gear catches and flips the plane. Boom, you are upside down and underwater.

One of the Forest Service folks who has been around for a while recounted how he narrowly missed being on a flight where this happened. The pilot was running a couple of loads of gear back and forth to a camp on a lake, and this guy needed to go back for something at the last minute, and so didn’t get on the plane. The pilot forgot the landing gear, and flipped. An unsecured propane tank from the back shot out the front window, directly through the passenger seat. Very lucky that he wasn’t sitting there! The pilot got out, and wasn’t able to convince the crew waiting at the camp that there was no passenger — they figured he was disoriented — and they dove in the lake to look for him for a while before it all got sorted out. This is just one of many war stories we have heard during the training period.

Anyway, we had the classroom portion of this training and then we divided into two groups for pool time. All the talk and anticipation was making me nervous about it, so I volunteered myself for the first group to get it over with.

At the pool, as I had heard, there was indeed a cage structure made of yellow PVC pipe, with a blue seat of laminated nylon sort of stuff in the middle, and a five point harness like you might have in a helicopter. You sit in the seat, and fasten up the harness, which has a release in the middle. You twist the release, either direction, and it all comes off immediately. You also wear a helmet, because you probably would in a helicopter or small plane, and be attached with some inflight communications system.

Here is what you practice.

1. Open your door, and lock the mechanism so it can’t relatch and trap you.
2. Undo any cords attaching you to the comms system.
3. Find a point of reference for your hand near the door.
4. Now, instead of leaving your hands on that point where your arm is rigid and could get broken, put them under your legs, or wrap them around you so your face is protected in the crook of your elbow. Don’t put your hand on the harness release, because you want to be strapped in at impact — that’s what the harness is there for!
5. Take a couple deep breaths before you hit the water, but not so many that you’re hyperventilating and will make yourself pass out. The instructor asks if you are ready. Say yes, and listen to the count of 1, 2, 3.
6. Now you’re in the water, upside down. Don’t flail around; stay calm and wait for the cage to settle. In a real crash, don’t wait so long that you are 300 feet below the surface, just long enough that the helicopter rotors or other dangerous moving debris is done.
7. Undo your harness.
8. Put your hand out to your reference point. From there grab another solid point, and so on until you are outside.
9. Head to the surface. Don’t kick anyone who is trying to get out behind you.

My first immersion I flailed a bit, but got out. The next two I was calmer and did fine, but not so well that they offered to tip me in backwards instead of forwards, although I did I have a simulated blocked exit (i.e. the Coastie splayed himself on the side I had been going out on) on the last one.

Throughout the practice, there were a couple snorkel masks being passed around so we could watch other people underwater. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, though. Some bubbles and moving limbs. Nobody stayed in for very long. Apparently, after I left, there was a person in the second group who really freaked out on the first dunk, and had to be calmed down, but went right back for the next one and finished the three times successfully.

Hopefully I never have to do this anywhere other than in a pool, but it is good, of course, to have a plan and a laminated card that says you’ve completed the ‘Survival Egress Aviation Safety 4 Hour Dunker Course.’

25 May

Two days into Forest Service training

I guess it is Tuesday. I have now had two days of Forest Service training, in company with a lot of other seasonal folks, and it has been intense. Yesterday was ethics, hazardous communications, defensive driving, wilderness, sexual harassment, payroll and housing, and probably some other things I’m forgetting.

Today was a lot more hands on. The topics were fire and water, with a few plants thrown in. We visited the beach and shoreline to familiarize ourselves with some of the plants. Thanks to my mother knowing pretty much everything, I already knew most of what the instructor told us. I already grew up eating fireweed and goose tongue and avoiding pushki on sunny days (or any days, really).

We also watched a video, taken by a tourist, of a halibut charter boat sinking, and noted all the things that they did wrong. They never looked for the hole. They didn’t try to bail although they had at least one five gallon bucket. They didn’t have any backup/battery powered GPS when the electric system went out. They never said “MAYDAY.” They didn’t put on extra clothes before abandoning into a zodiac. They didn’t try to signal the boats that were nearby, but waited to shoot off a flare until a helicopter was spotted (they were able to contact the Coasties on a cell phone before the boat went under).

The instructor’s opinion was that so many people spend so much time watching television, that most automatically put themselves in the spectator role. Someone in this situation spent the whole time videotaping, when they could have picked up a damn bucket and tried to keep the boat from sinking.

Then we went out and spent some time taking action rather than being spectators. We drove out of town to about the end of the road (the paved road goes 7 miles each way from town), and the instructor poured a gallon of gas into a big pan in the middle of a gravel turn out. Then he lit a flare taped to the end of a ten foot pole, and lit the gas, and we took turns putting it out with different types of fire extinguishers. Then we shot off a bunch of flares to see how they worked.

From the flares, I learned that the kind I carried for two summers as a kayak guide in Kachemak Bay are the cheap kind (I knew that) and that once expired they pretty much never work. But a $47 one made in Sweden goes up a thousand feet, makes a big noise, and floats down on a little parachute, and should be visible for forty miles in open country. So if I go kayaking again, now I know that the little orange plastic flares are not the ones I want to take, maybe even if they are new.

Next we went to the pool and experimented with survival suits and with a bunch of different types of life jackets. The instructor, Dug Jensen, lists his business as “Dug Jensen & family” and brought in his wife and son to help. His wife was on the PFD station, and his son was on the side of the pool with a hose to spray cold water in our faces while we tried to do survival things – climb into a floating tent/raft thing, or swim across the pool in a tightly huddled group to conserve heat. A survival suit is a handy thing, but it’s not that comfortable in the long run, and trying to get through the water while it’s cold and coming into your face really sucked. And I’m sure it would be about fifty times worse when you’re out in the open ocean.

Tomorrow afternoon there is another training in the pool, which has been subject of much speculation and we’ll see how bad, or not so bad, it actually turns out. It is called P.I.G. training. The acronym, I believe, stands for Personal Immersion Gadget and to my understanding is some sort of PVC cage with a seat in it, designed to simulate what you would be strapped into in a small plane or helicopter. And the training is how to get out of it in the water. Today with the PFDs, we were told that the aviation life vests are designed so you have to manually trigger inflation, because otherwise they can fatally impair your movement if underwater in a plane.

Myself, I am a pretty strong swimmer, and I have already gone through the nervousness of getting out of kayaks underwater. Plus, it’s a safety training, so it seems pretty obvious that it will be conducted in the safest way possible. But I can still see why some people are pretty nervous about this one. We’ll see how it goes…

22 May

Sitka!

I have officially arrived in Sitka, Alaska, for my next adventure. I’ll be working with the Sitka Conservation Society and the USDA Forest Service to tell the story of the connection between the Tongass National Forest and the abundant salmon runs of SE Alaska. Apparently this who will start with two weeks of training on various topics from the Forest Service, from radio operation to ethics to sea shore survival. I’ve been opted out of rifle certification, and assured that in the field I will always be with someone who is rifle certified. Should be fun!

Since I’m classed as a FS volunteer, I get to stay in the FS bunkhouse, about a mile out of town. The house itself isn’t much to speak of — mostly it gives me strong college dorm flashbacks — but it’s across the street from the beach. When I left this afternoon to walk to town (and get a sense of when I need to leave tomorrow for 8 am training!) at first I was going to count the eagles. I walked out the door and crossed the street and saw maybe half a dozen eagles. A little further, and I could see down to the shoreline and by then I’d seen a dozen or so bald eagles. And after that I figured I wouldn’t bother counting. There’s just a lot of eagles here, and I say that having grown up in Homer, another Alaskan town known for its eagles.

Now, although I am tempted to stay at the library and compete in what is apparently Sitka’s Annual Adult Spelling Bee, I’m going to hoof it back to the bunkhouse. I saw a place on the waterfront with a sign about salmon or rockfish or crab, and I am hungry…