Lekaro

I’ve just finished two days of oil spill cleanup exercises together with the fire department in Oslo, and it’s been two very nice and educational days.

Yesterday the officers from FIG Follo and the IG in Follo spent the day with Eivind Ask who held an excellent lecture in how oil spill cleanups should be handled. I think he did a great job, even if he had to compress what usually is a two day lecture into one.

Then today we got together with the rest of the FIG and IG and headed down to Sjursøya. Sjursøya is a peninsula just southwest of the center of Oslo and contains a large terminal for fuel oil distribution. Which means it’s a prime spot for oil leaks, and I guess a possible site for a gigantic fireball. I guess we were lucky that there were no fuel trains at the depot when the runaway cargo train hit  on the 24th of March [1]

But today it was all quiet and the weather was great. I’ve even managed to get a divide where my beret has been all day

At first the fire chief took us to have a look at the larger mounted oil spill booms that are on a winch drum ready to be pulled out swiftly to prevent any oil leaks from the terminal or cargo ship to  escape into the Oslo fjord.

Then we divided up and started going thou some of the equipment that we might come in contact with if we get called out.

The FIG started out with the Vacuna 1000 system. The Vacuna system is a system for sucking up oil from the shorelines. It’s based around a air pump that can be configured either to blow bark onto the oil spill or to suck up oil, water and bark from the same place.

Bark is blown onto the oil in order to make it less sticky and easier to get at, either by using the suction part of the pump or more commonly, by hand. There’s no use trying to hide it, getting oil from the shores is grueling, backbreaking, tedious manual labor. The pump will work great if the oil is still in pools or floating on water, but as soon as it hits the rock you’ll have to get down and dirty.

The bark also helps nature work a bit faster when it comes to breaking down leftover oil. Getting all the oil from a spill out of the ground is impossible, but if we get most of it out nature will eventually do the rest.

After the Vacuna we went and had a look at the different oil spill booms that are in use. The equipment we went thou is made for calm waters mostly. There are bigger booms but I don’t think we’ll ever see those in the Oslo fjord.

The smallest were one time use booms that actually soak up oil from the water and is the retrieved and disposed of like the rest of the oil that is collected.

The other type is a type that is stored as 25m lengths that might be connected together to for long links.

The last type is a boom that comes “flat packed”. It got a spring loaded air chamber with a one way air valve, when it’s packed it’s rolled tightly and all the air chambers are deflated. To deploy you’ll drop the whole coil into the sea and the pick up the end and start pulling it out. As you unwind the coil the springs in the air chamber is sucking air unto the top part which acts as the booms floating device.

Quite an ingenious contraption. Just make sure you don’t tow it in a to shallow arch, since it might then suck air into the chamber and sink

To get it back up you’ll have to have a purpose built packing machine. As you drag the boom from the sea you’ll put all the valves in an open position and the machine will wind it neatly into a coil ready to be deployed again later. But of course if it’s been in contact with oil you’ll have to unwind it again, clean it and then rewind it later. Lots of work. I guess that’s why we didn’t get to try out any of those.

Then we went on to the more hand on stuff, looking at the equipment used to scoop up oil manually and fill up Big Bags. The Big Bags are large plastic lined bags that is used to collect oil. Then at a later stage these can be floated to a bout, picked up with a truck or airlifted to some waste disposal plants.

We also went trough how to set up a forward depot with clean and dirty zones where the people doing the dirty work can come and change into clean outfits without con terminating a larger area.

Then we went to lunch, always the best part

After lunch we went and ha a look at the sea skimmer. This is a mechanical device that floats in the water and has some system for collection oil. The one we have has a series of vertical rotating discs powered by a hydraulic pump. The oil will stick to the disc and be scraped of into a container and from there pumped up and sent to be disposed of. The whole setup looks extremely simple, but according to our instructor it is working very well for recovering floating oil.

At the end we had a little competition / exercise where 6 of our squad members went through some of the things we learned that day. Our team was set to connect up the Vacuna and blow some more bark before we reverted the system and sucked i all back into the suction tank. And when that tank was “full” it was emptied over into a holding tank again by reversing the system.

I wasn’t a part of that team but I think they did well. I guess everyone learned quite a few things today, and it’s nice to do something else for a change

And here are some pictures I took today, have fun.

[View with PicLens]

Today I’ve been in the woods with my FIG at a Civil Defence exercise. And I guess it couldn’t have gone much better.

We started out at 9 at Grorud where the base of Civil Defences in Oslo and Akershus are based. As we arrived we were directed directly to the depot to get new boots. I’ve been looking forward to testing the new boots and after a day of walking, running , splashing in water and carrying stuff I’m very pleased.

The new boots have a good fit, are soft and flexible and not to heavy. Yet they offer good support for you ankles and cot a composite “steel cap” to protect your toes. And they’re gortex. Which at least initially is a good idea, we’ll just have to see how well it works after a few years of abuse

Then we had some time getting to know some of the new members that has joined the group and to re familiarize our selves with the firefighting equipment that we got on our car. We opened a manhole, went down and attached a  valve to the hydrant and the a 2.5″ hose to get the water out of the hole. And then everyone took turns going down or practising the attaching of the valve in a training rig.

Then we went to  Steinbruvannet, a little lake just a few minutes from the base. We started by getting out what we needed for the exercise from our own car and from a larger truck. And we finally have some useful equipment to the ATV that we have. They now got a small trailer for it, big enough for one fire pump (Ziegler Ultra Power) and some hoses and other equipment that you would need. This is great since the ATV can get to places where out ordinary truck cannot go. Which means less carrying for us Which is good considering the pump weights around 190 kilos.

Then we split the group in two and have a hose connection relay race. We started out by laying out a 4″ hose (25 m) and then a branch pipe, which reduces the 4″ to 3 x 2.5″ from there we had one 2.5″ hose (25 m) to a new smaller branch pipe which is split into two 1.5″ connectors, and then finally one length of 1.5″ hose (20 m) and a nozzle at the end. Then each team member had to start by attaching the hose to the pipe then running to the next connection and do that up and so one all the way to the top, of course the track ran uphills, and then on the way back down he/she would disconnect all the connections again preparing for the next in the relay.

Out group was one short so in the heat of the moment I decided to take a second run in the end just to be fair. But the few seconds of hesitation caused us victory. Shit happens

After that we did some drills on how the pump works, starting stopping, running on full auto and we simulated a feed hose breaking to se how the pump reacts and what to do when this happens. And i guess that when we are in the woods pumping like mad that will happen from time to time.

The last part of the exercise was to lay out a standard fire fighting hose arrangement to see how it works and how well we can wet the bushes and threes. One pump can pump around 2000 l each minute and the nozzles will handle about 500 l each so a standard layout have three nozzles connected to one pump. Then we have something in backup if we need it.

All of this in brillinat sunny weather, couldn’t have been any better

But now it’s time for bed, tomorrow is going to be a long day to.

Up early to play and the Susan will arrive later to spend the weekend in Oslo.

As I promised I’ll post some pictures from the burn here. It’s kind of scary to see how fast it actually goes.

This first picture was taken about five minutes after we lit the place up. The barn was torched inside up against the wall to the right in this picture.

This next one was taken 3 minutes later.

The 12 minutes after this shot I took this picture. We have now been bruning for about 20 minutes

And at last I took this one about 26 minutes after the place was lit up.

I found this movie somone made from their basic training at Starum

Then I’m back home again after two weeks of studies, fun and meeting a lot of new cool people. Today I’m not feeling too good and I’m a bit “blinded”

We did and exercise with teargas to check that our gas masks were leak proof and formed a proper seal, which it did, but in the process I had to remove my glasses, and I managed to drop them on the ground and someone stepped on them. So right now I only have my sunnies it I need to do a bit of typing or reading. It looks a bit strange going around with sun glasses in the dark

But I’ll just have to go get a new pair tomorrow.

Last night we had a party to celebrate the last night, and as usual it got a bit moist

We’ve done it, we planned and executed the burning of a 800 square meter barn. Woppee.

The whole thing was a part of the course I’ve been attending the last couple of weeks, yesterday we went out to the place in the morning to have a look at the place and to see what other buildings we needed to protect from the fire. 

As you can see the barn was quite close to the main building, about 40 meters, and even closet to a newer tool shed. But we managed to protect those. We set up four fire pumps at the lake which is about 250 meters to the east of these buildings, three that was supplying water to hoses and three water walls, and one in backup just in case. then we rolled out something like 1.2 km of 4″ hoses and a then some 2.5″ hoses.

Then after a few problems with the pumps and a few broken hoses that needed replacing we were ready to light up place. The fire was lit in an old sofa in the north end of the barn at 10:25 and after about 8 minutes the whole place was ablaze. At 11:13 the last south wall finally collapsed inwards as planned and at 11:35 there was no more danger that the fire would escalate outside the foundation of the building so the fire pumps were shut down. It’s kind of scare to se how fast the fire grown and how destructive it is, but it’s also nice to have experienced this so close.

I’ll se if I cannot create a timeline of the pictures I took as the fire progressed some day when I get back home.

Or at least I’ll try to be one tomorrow.

Today we got the task of presenting an subject to the rest of the people in my course. So my teaching for tomorrow will be on the subject “Circulation failure and bleeding” Where I’m supposed to look at the symptoms, causes and first aid responses when dealing with circulation failure, internal bleeding and plain ordinary bleeding in different forms.

Keeping my fingers crossed since my background material is kind of limited ( 4 pages in my first aid textbook ) and I’m supposed to give a 30 minute lecture.

I’ve got some practical tasks for my students so hopefully that will take a while

well then the first day of my two days courses has ended, and so far it looks like it’s going to be a good two weeks. The people here are nice and the whole course plan seems to be interesting. I’m hoping to be able to do some updating here from time to time.

Today we’ve had some general Civil Defence information, done a short presentation of ourselves for our class, had some information on the rules regarding uniforms and starter on some team leader exercises, and tomorrow wwe’ll continue with more of the same. Should be good.

The best part of this course will probably be next Wednesday when we are going to lead the people doing their basic training when they are burning down an 800 square meter barn. Should be fun.