This is not, in fact, about kitchen safety. If you've worked in one kitchen, it's all basically the same: wear nonslip shoes, change gloves often, don't stick a finger in the meat slicer—the usual. No, safety on the Ice is a lifestyle. How else are you going to avoid slips, trips, and falls injuries?
Antarctica is one of, if not the, harshest climate on earth. So to say that the National Science Foundation and the partnering companies take safety very seriously is an understatement. If the discussion on conditions last week didn't give the whole picture, everything is tied to the weather here and how to mitigate the damage that it can do to property and person. If you want a tangible perspective of how important they take safety: all the new people were allowed to leave work for a few hours to attend a safety lecture. If a company wants you to not work to hear this, it's got to be important. Maybe more important than avoiding slips, trips, and falls injuries.
For example purposes, we're going to talk about the Arctic Field Safety (AFS) training—the one I got out of work for. The purpose of this training was essentially risk management by way of survival training. There's an ever-present opportunity to be out and about in severe weather, either by choice or by necessity, and while life around the station can be fairly safe, that's less true as you go out on excursions, hikes, or leisure activities. To give you a lifeline should anything go wrong and you are trapped outside for an extended period, we were shown what the Survival Bag is and how to use the items included, including how to treat slips, trips, and falls.
The best way to start off a any lesson is with fire, so we learned how to use small gas stoves that you pressurize yourself.
The whole fire set is included in the Survival Bag, along with a basic first aid kit, a saw to cut the snow and ice, stable meals, sleeping bags, a grab bag of additional cold weather gear, and a tent, along with some other odds and ends. One bag can support two people for three days.
Setting up the tent was more complicated than we initially thought. I think all of us were glad to not have to figure that out when actual survival was at stake. And it's hard to slip, trip, or fall in such a low tent.
We also learned a fair bit about frostbite and ways you can get it, even when you're being careful. Our instructor shared one story of a mountain climber who on the final journey to the top of a mountain put on an extra pair of socks as it was colder that day. When he got down, from his toes to the balls of his feet were blistered and frostbitten. It happened not because it was so cold, but because the circulation had been diminished. This is also the first place I've heard the term "frostnip," which is apparently an early sign of frostbite and tends to happen on exposed areas like ears and the nose. The pictures were bad enough—not something I want to experience in real life. Like slips, trips, and falls injuries.
All of this orbited a discussion of risk; how the odds of something happening and the severity of the outcome had to be weighed in all circumstances. Weighing risk and making choices is about judging the likely hood and the consequence, identifying ways to mitigate one or the other, and ultimately acting on it. That's the thing about being in Antarctica. If you want to go for a hike, not only do you need to be aware of what could go wrong and what to do about it, but you're required to make decisions about whether it is even wise to do something in the first place. Luckily we have lots of trained professionals to help make those decisions, so even if I did want to go hiking with a herbie on the way (herbie is what they call a storm with high wind and snow—I only learned this in the last week), communications and recreation staff wouldn't allow me to. They know how easy it is to slip, trip, and fall in weather like that.
This was one of several safety trainings I had to attend. We also have a weekly safety meeting for the entire Galley staff. For both recreation and kitchen work, I think the trainings boil down to knowing how and then making wise choices. I admit that I'm not a particularly outdoorsy type, so the long hikes and ski paths are probably not in my future, but the little things of knowing how to stay safe and avoid a real emergency is going to be good to know regardless. So while it was mandatory training, I don't mind the interruption.
Also, did you know that slips, trips, and falls are the most common form of injury in Antarctica? Because I sure freakin' do now!
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