Emergency Response

In the event of an emergency during the winter, South Pole Station is pretty much on its own. The winter station is staffed with a doctor and a nurse and has a comprehensive medical facility that has in the past handled operations such as appendectomies. Although evacuations can be called in for an urgent medical situation (the last one was in 1999), it is very expensive and dangerous. Basically, a flight needs to be contracted from the flyers that are used during the Summer at McMurdo to service the field camps. From the time a flight is requested to when it is approved and makes its way from Canada to the South Pole takes about a month, after which the plane has to land in the dark on a runway lit by trash can fires (or at least I assume). 

Because of the remoteness of the station, all winterovers are trained to take part in emergency response teams (ERTs). The three emergency response teams are Fire Team, Medical, and Logistics. Each ERT meets about once a week to train in their specialty. 

Fire Team responds during an emergency drill

Fire Team is responsible for putting out small fires and clearing areas. However, because of the lack of any firefighting equipment besides bunker gear and fire extinguishers, in the case of a real fire the fire team would most likely just watch the building burn down. Medical team is responsible for first aid on the scene of an incident and for transporting injured personnel back to the medical lab, and are also trained to help the medical staff with injured patients. The logistics team is supposed to deal with making sure the necessary emergency response equipment is available on an incident cite and manages vehicle transport to the incident site. 

A patient is treated in the medical facility during an emergency drill

Every month there is an emergency response drill where fake incidents are staged an the ERTs practice their roles. 

Medical Team members package a patient for transport during an emergency drill

I'm a member of the medical response team, which I enjoy because we get to learn different medical tests/procedures each week. However, because of poor leadership our trainings haven't been very helpful the past few weeks. As it gets closer to the first flight out, people just stop caring as much. So although I did get to wound someone while practicing IVs, we probably will never learn X-rays. 

Other info:

• Another emergency response situation is if someone happens to be lost outside in low visibility windstorm. 
• We do actually have a cyanide antidote kit in medical
• We call the station doctor 'Doc' and I doubt if half the people on station know his real name
• This morning we had a meeting to discuss what to do if a plane crashes. Basically, we have no capability to deal with such a situation

Next week in Pole: The mystery of Nibiru and the South Pole Telescope!