SAFETY DRILLS
Your question: “You mentioned emergency drills a while back. What kind of emergencies?!” The drills are tied to a system of alarm bells with different short + long signal combinations for “general emergency”, “abandon ship”, and “person overboard”. Person overboard seems laughable at this point- I cannot imagine anyone surviving long enough in the water for the ship to turn around and come get them. Luckily I haven’t heard of anyone falling overboard ever from this ship, nor have I heard of any abandon ship situations.
“General emergency” includes things like fires. I heard that years ago there was a spark from something being plugged in wrong and it set off the fire alarm, which was scary for people being woken up but easy to fix. The general emergency also includes any situation where the crew wants to know everyone is safe in a single location, like if there’s a security issue. They used this signal once years ago, when they were working in the ice and a small unmarked boat approached the ship without answering radio calls. It turns out the boat was just taking a look, but the crew needed to know they could maneuver the ship however was necessary without worrying about scientists out on a slippery deck.
We can’t hear the alarms inside the walk-in lab fridges. So there’s a magnetic sign that lives on the wall but can be slapped onto the lab fridge doors. It says “Someone is working in here. In case of an emergency- get them out!!!” with a cartoon of a happy person in a lab coat.
🚨 Virginia
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A walk on the bridge catwalk (54 ft high) followed by a quick trip around the ice tower catwalk (80 ft high). When I send you pictures of ice or wildlife, these 2 places are almost always where I’m standing to get those shots. I like how the bow is close to the water so I can get closer to things going by. But it’s hard to hang out there for more than a few minutes at a time when I have my fingertips out to operate my camera- I get way too cold. I can spend hours at a time in the warmth of the bridge or ice tower, popping out onto the walkways every now and then to get pictures or video. This is shot at 2x speed- I don’t have the bandwidth to send you the long video right now.