The Fire House Station 1

We have 2 fire stations at McMurdo. There is one in town where the fire engines and ambulance are kept. There is also a station on the ice runway where we take care of the airplanes as they take off and land. We rotate between station each day.

This is the tanker at station 1. It is an open cab meaning that the back is open to the air. It gets really cold riding around in the snow, but this is what they have and there is not funding to change to an closed cab system.

The bay at station 1 with the tanker and engine.

The station has a kitchen:

Day room with TV and pool table:


Training Room:


Bathroom with elevated throne:


And the bunk room where they make us all sleep together. The bunk room is very noisy with all the snoring and gets really hot at night with no way to open the windows.

We work 24 hous on 24 hour off. Every 2 weeks we get what is called a K day which equates to a day off. My K day is on Sunday so I end up getting every Sunday off. On the K day weeks, I get 3 days off in a row. Some times it is hard to fill 3 days down here. The rest of the town works 10 hour days, 6 days a week and get Sunday off. With my K day being the same as the rest of the town's, I get to see people I would not see during the week.

When the weather gets bad we get a lot of fire alarm calls set off by the wind. We still have to respond to each one. Here are the pictures from the last storm.