Saturday, September 1, 2012

Offshore Emergency Training

The plan as we know it for Ryan and I is to go Offshore Russia once the platform we are building here in Korea sails to its final location next summer. In order to prepare for this, they sent me to BOSIET which stands for Basic Offshore Safety Induction and Emergency Training. I headed to the training center in Busan on Thursday and our training began. The training was 2 days and the morning was power point presentation material on the basics and then the afternoon was full of practical exercises. 

The practical exercises in the afternoon all took place in the pool. Seeing as pictures and videos will tell the story the best, I've put in a bunch. :) 
This is the group of us with our instructor in the suits that they're going to make us wear - said to be waterproof and complete with Emergency Breathing and Life Vest inside! 
We had to get into the Escape Craft, get lowered down to the water, and then exit - it was certainly very hot and smelled like fiber glass...not a place I would want to spend much time. 
Then we moved onto the helicopter exercises....
Here we are in the water practicing with our rebreathers - you breathe into it and it recirculates that breath for you to breath instead of holding your breath - gives you about a minute of air
All strapped into the helicopter - simulating a landing on land (not in the water)

Ready to go for the training! 

They had divers in the water to make sure we got out safely 
If you're looking at this picture, I'm the one in the front left (Helmet 5)
Preparing to Ditch (crash into the water)
We had to do 6 exercises total - 3 times this way where you sink into the water this way and then have to get out through the window
The other 3 exercises are done as if the helicopter capsizes - the video shows an example of where we did this. We had to use the rebreather and escape through the window...you'll notice that I'm the first one out - my survival instincts are strong :) 

The rest of the day we spent doing some other exercises such as getting into a raft and then being rescued to safety with a harness. What a great day of training...I'm really glad that I learned everything that I did but I REALLY hope that I never have to put any of it into practice.

Unfortunately I didn't grab any pictures of our exercises on the second day, but it was all about fire safety, so we had to maneuver around a smoke filled room to get out and then also use several types of fire extinguishers to put out fires. It was really great training!

Ryan should be heading to the training in the next couple of months so we'll be sure to post any pictures of his experiences, too! 

Typhoon Bolaven

Over the weekend, we started hearing on the news that there was a typhoon that was heading our way. We knew that a typhoon was basically a hurricane in the eastern half of the world but it was our first one none the less so we were secretly a little excited about it. Just to be safe, we went and got some extra food from the grocery store and monitored the storm online....these are the kinds of pictures we were seeing...it looked giant! Satellite Picture of Typhoon Bolaven

On Monday afternoon, they told us that the offices would be closed on Tuesday because of the storm = Typhoon Tuesday!! We woke up the next day to a lot of howling wind and some rain but it was fairly anti-climactic - we kept expecting the power to go out, but luckily we were completely safe and sound from the storm. The storm was so anti-climactic in fact that they opened the offices after lunch and we headed back in to work. At least now we can check: "Experience a Typhoon" off our list of life experiences without too much trouble. :)