Long post, sorry... Some of you might be interested in what I did on Saturday. I thought it was pretty cool. I was one of 16 people from Coastguard who got to attend the navy's Damage Control School.

First thing we did was firefighting. We had some training in using various types of extinguisher. I managed to get through this part still having eyebrows, but some people weren't so lucky. :-) The fires we had to put out were pretty substantial and the wind always seemed to blow them *towards* us just as we got there.

I learned to hate CO2 (dry ice) and dry powder extinguishers. With CO2 you have to be so close to the fire you're practically *in* it, and the temperature of the container drops so quickly when used that your hands freeze to the metal if you touch it by mistake. Yay. You can get burned and frozen at the same time. Dry powder blasts everywhere and the whole area looks like it's had a 10 cm snowfall in five seconds flat. You can't avoid inhaling the stuff and it gets in your eyes too. What a mess.

Next it was time for the scary bit - "toxic environment" firefighting. We were introduced to a two-storey segment of ship, its whole interior black with soot. A diesel fire was lit on a lower level. We had to go through in pairs, get to the fire, put it out, and escape. We had no lights or breathing apparatus so we were breathing black smoke and diesel fumes the whole way in, and couldn't see where we were going. Speed was to our advantage. There were instructors inside wearing breathing gear and thermal imaging cameras "so we can watch what you do and pull you out when you collapse." This is what passes for soothing reassurance in the Navy; they need to work on it a little.

This may sound obvious, but it is *hard* to go through two rooms and down a ladder while carrying a huge fire extinguisher and not being able to see or breathe. When we got to the fire, we had to approach it lying on our stomachs, pushing the extinguishers ahead of us to give our faces some protection. Steel deck plating is not comfortable for this purpose and I ended up in a puddle of dirty water too.

After we put the fire out, hooray, it was now *completely* dark and we couldn't find the ladder again in all the thick black smoke. Our reward for putting it out was getting breathing gear for our exit. These were the escape sets carried by law on merchant ships and they suck. They give you enough air for eight minutes, they're unbearably hot, completely remove what little vision you may still have, and make you feel like you're suffocating. Of course we had to haul the stupid extinguishers back out with us, and by this time the steel ladder had heated up too. I think it was the scariest eight minutes of my life.

The second half of the day was the "sinking ship" experience. I haven't seen "Titanic" and now I don't need to. The Navy has set up the superstructure of a junked ship as a simulator. In we went, they slammed the doors with a final-sounding thunk, and in came the water. At first it was jetting up through a hole in the floor, in a lower bunkroom. We headed down there. We got a mattress over the hole and four of us stood on it while the others went to find a supply room, cut wood and make struts and wedges to hold a steel plate over the hole. The water was knee-deep in the bunkroom by the time they got back, and needless to say the Navy does not heat the water in its simulator.

The whole time, the ship was moving realistically. Every so often, some "rascal" in the control room would throw a switch and tip the whole thing violently to one side. There was water from burst pipes spraying everywhere and "random" power cuts to the lighting.

The geyser from the floor was still pouring in and then suddenly another one blasted out of a split in the wall. I was sent to attend to this one, with two other people. Want a good workout? Try pulling a soaked mattress through waist-deep freezing cold water, across a large room which randomly tilts to a 20 degree angle, and holding it up against a huge violent jet of water slightly above shoulder height. They kept us holding the soggy mattress there for a LONG time. We dropped it once and I got blasted across the room by a water jet to the face. I don't know if the others did too, it was a while before I managed to get the water out of my eyes and flounder back to the wall.

We had just got a steel plate over the split when they tipped the room again and what felt like ten tons of water knocked the whole lot of us back to the other side of the room. By this time the lighting was gone, so it was really dark, and the water was about chest deep. This wasn't *clean* water. I've never tasted anything so evil. It tasted just like you'd expect of water pumped out of a swamp, circulated through greasy metal pipes, and tinged with a fine bouquet of oil, diesel, mud and dirty mattresses.

Finally we were told to abandon ship, through a manhole in the ceiling. When someone opened it, another truckload of dirty water from the room above came pouring down through! We somehow managed to lift, push and pull the whole group through. It was like trying to climb into a giant firehose. I banged my knee on the edge of the hole, oww.

It turned out the ship was riddled with hidden cameras, so we finished the day watching our little videoed selves being drenched, drowned and generally battered while gleeful instructors told us what we'd done wrong. I'm getting a copy of the tape; I'll see if I can put some of it online if anyone is interested.

So, anyway, that was a ruling day. I stayed in bed until noon on Sunday and am still discovering pulled muscles and bruised bits. Thank goodness for a nice boring desk job in between. Oh yeah, and bonus points for anyone who knows what the title of this post refers to. ;-)

Brunnen-"we got the basic scenario, advanced classes get smoke fumes AND sinking at the same time"G