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ANTARCTICA

Walking the Fuel Lines

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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The official closing of McMurdo station for the winter comes when the last flight leaves town. This is usually at the end of February, but this year it was March 9. The reason for this was as follows. A few years ago, a giant iceberg broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf. This isn't that unusual, since large icebergs regularly break off from various ice shelves around the continent. However, instead of happily floating north and melting away, this one decided to come toward Ross Island and stay for a while. There were other icebergs that lingered in our vicinity, but B-15 is the most important one. It is actually grounded in place and has hardly moved in several years. It is in such a location that it interferes with the annual sea ice breaking up and flowing away during the summer. Usually, the warmer summer temperatures will cause the ice to break up, and it will be sent northward by the currents and winds. But this has not happened for the past few years. Therefore, the sea ice near McMurdo is much thicker than normal since it has had years to build up. Two icebreakers were needed to cut the ice channel to McMurdo this year, and the Coast Guard is not happy since the boats take a real beating while doing this job. There is no relief in sight, since this iceberg is still here. As you might imagine, it will be even more difficult to resupply the station next year. In fact, there is talk of not even attempting to cut a channel all the way to McMurdo. The powers that be are contemplating just getting the cargo/fuel ships as close as possible and then unloading them while they are parked out on the ice a ways. This is what we did this year with the fuel ship. Although the cargo ship was able to come in to port (with much difficulty), after it left the fuel ship did not even attempt this. The icebreakers simply opened up the channel and escorted it close enough to allow us to offload the fuel by laying out hoses over the sea ice. So, the tasks of a) getting the ship as close as possible to station and b) offloading the fuel through small hose lines took a while longer than usual. Thus, the station closing was delayed nearly two weeks. During the offload, management solicited volunteers to continuously check the entire fuel line (from ship to storage tanks) to look for leaks. They had it set up as three 8-hour shifts each day. I signed up for this, and so did Olivia. Since we each had to keep doing our normal jobs too, we took turns and worked the fuel lines on alternating days. This is a picture of the whole thing, from the base of Ob Hill. The Matthiesen is parked about 4 miles from station (along with the Healy). The Polar Sea is sitting in the ice channel to the left. The fleet ops crew built a road out to the Matthiesen and the fuelies laid out two flexible hose along the ice to the ship.

Speaking of the icebergs, this is a satellite image of the iceberg B-15 and Ross Island. This picture is 18 months old, but it really doesn't look that much different from picures taken last week....it's still in about the same spot! It is about the size of Rhode Island. It's directly on the opposite side of Ross Island from McMurdo, but I was able to catch a glimpse of it while on a trip to Mt. Erebus.

This is a picture of the Matthiesen and Polar Sea at night, from Arrival Heights.

Here's the view from Hut Point during the offload. From left to right: Polar Sea, Matthiesen, Healy, and Palmer. This was as close as the Palmer got to station this year, since they did not want to risk damage the ship by going through the ice channel.

A panoramic view of the road and fuel lines going to the tanker from Hut Point. There were several jobs associated with the fuel lines. The two pumping stations along the way had to be monitored and tweaked to maintain sufficient flow. The hoselines on the sea ice required people to ride along side in snowmobiles checking for leaks (these were the 'hosers'). The fuel pipes in town (running from Hut Point to the fuel tanks on the Scott Base side of station) needed people to walk along and check for leaks (these were the 'hardliners'). Finally, people were stationed at the tanks themselves to measure the fuel level as we filled various tanks. I ended up being a hardliner...which turned out to be the least enjoyable job of them all. Eight hours a day, either myself or Olivia would trudge along the fuel pipes as they meander through town....checking for leaks at every single valve as well as the pumping station junctions. Every shift there would be two people doing the hardliner job, two people as hosers, two people at the tanks, two people at each pumping station, one coordinater on the radio, and one person overseeing the whole operation.

This is the lower pumping station, near the tip of Hut Point. Three types of fuel are used at McMurdo: JP-5 is a diesel grade for ground vehicles, AN-8 is an aircraft grade formulated for Antarctic use, and Mogas is unleaded fuel for ground vehicles, identical to what you get at the corner store. There are separate pipelines in town for each type of fuel. This year, only JP-5 and AN-8 were brought in. So each pumping station had two pumps.

A picture of the lines headed to Hut Point.

Another 'un.

The fuel tanks at McMurdo are maybe 100' higher than the sea ice, so it takes two pumping stations to push the fuel up the pipelines. This is the upper pumping station, with the swing shift operators.

This is the tank farm at the other side of town, right off the road to Scott Base. These are relatively new, and were built to increase our storage capacity over the old tanks which were built in the Navy days. These also have nice dirt berms around them with plastic liners underneath which would contain a spill of the entire tank. The berms are also fun to ride your bike on, as long as you are not seen by the wrong people....

Another picture of the unexpectedly picturesque tank farm.

For some reason, the top of this tank with the Radarsat dome sticking out caught my eye.

This is the pumphouse, located near the fuel tanks. This will pump fuel out to Williams Field...

....via these lines which go "over the pass" along the Scott Base road.

Another picture of industrial McMurdo - the gas cylinder farm which sits below the fuel tanks.

While doing this job, I was actually able to wear my normal shoes with a couple layers of socks. This was nice, since I didn't have to wear the dreaded bunny boots. The fuel lines twist and turn their way through town, and there are a lot of awkward spots to walk on/over/under/through as you follow their path. There were also a surprising number of boards with nails sticking up out of them! Anyway, traction was a good thing to have, so I'm glad the shoes were good enough to keep my feet reasonably warm. But this particular day was the coldest of the entire job...so here I am with the goggles and face mask. It was pretty good exercise and I didn't complain about the physical part of it. But 8 hours of trudging back and forth and back and forth along these fuel lines was absolutely mind-numbing.

Although it was extremely boring, I did notice a few humorous things along the fuel lines. This is one of them. There are several historic crosses in this area erected by the old explorers: Scott's cross on Ob Hill, Vince's cross on Hut Point, the Ross Sea Party cross at Cape Evans, and even one in the middle of McMurdo made for someone named Micou. This particular cross was put up by some wiseacre in memory of "Good Old Common Sense". It's pretty well hidden in the "back streets" of McMurdo, which is the only reason it hasn't been taken down. It looks flimsy, but it's still there through all the storms. On a related note, this fuel offload was the first time such an operation had been done at McMurdo. Accordingly, it was a very high profile event. Many meetings were held, many brows were furrowed, and a very thick SOP document was created for the process. However, this operation is not actually a new idea. It is done regularly at Marble Point, our helicopter refueling station near the Dry Valleys. There is no pier there, so a ship will pull up ways off shore and hoses will be laid out to resupply the tanks. This is not a major event there, just normal operation of the facility. However, at McMurdo this became an entirely different affair, and was very closely watched. Out came the safety and environmental bullhorns, which incessantly blared out heavy handed warnings about safety and our duty to protect the environment. Good ideas, but the lesson as always is that with most RPSC/NSF upper management, the level of "concern" about safety and the environment increases in direct proportion to your visibility when appearing concerned.

This little sculpture sits right by the common sense cross. It's a little man holding a ring, flame-cut from a piece of pipe. Cool.

This is another good example of the humor of McMurdo-ites. There are several kinds of valves on the fuel lines - one of which is a drop valve. Each one is labeled with a little nameplate which designates the type of valve and its number. This is the nameplate for valve "Drop 4".

The wind really picked up one day, which turned out to be Olivia's day to walk the lines. It was so bad that her and Elise (the other swing-shift hardliner) were having difficulty walking uphill from Hut Point to the fuel tanks against the wind. So I got the truck and shuttled them in this direction so they just had to walk downhill with the wind. This is a picture of the carpenter shop and the sun, with some brutal blowing snow. It really doesn't snow that much here, actually. The wind just picks it up and moves it around...vigorously.

Here's another one of the carp shop during the wind storm.

The crew from the Matthiesen was able to come into town for a while during the offload. A couple passenger Deltas were used to transport them to and from the ship. On one of my shifts the crew was headed back to the ship. Here are the Deltas driving along the Hut Point road on their way to the sea ice.

Another one of the Deltas as they passed the lower pumping station.

Walking the fuel lines was kind of a drag most of the time, but I did end up meeting some cool people that I didn't know before. One was a girl (who shall remain nameless) that got busted over the summer for mooning the NSF representative. Well, she actually meant to moon her friend...but he was right nearby. Now THAT'S funny! Another was a guy nicknamed Crunch who operated a pump during fuel offload. Another was Jen, shown here with some mail for Crunch. Jen was one of the swing shift workers in the pumphouse and has become a friend of mine during the winter. Since the hardliners had to walk back and forth from the pumphouse to Hut Point, we passed both pumping stations each time. There were some magazines laying around in the pumphouse, so the girls there decided to send mail to the guys at the pumps. This one is for Crunch, asking if these were his girlfriends.

In the pumphouse, there was a copy of Bitch magazine. Why? How? What? Who knows. But it was funny enough to take a picture of. This was the special *Pink Issue*.