Station Tour

The elevated station. The far U is A pod, and the near U is B pod. The pole is located off to the 

left and about even with the middle of A pod. This photo is from 2008. The dome has since

been torn down.

I thought I'd give a bit of a station tour this week, seeing as I haven't actually done that yet. Construction on the elevated station began in 1999, and it was dedicated in 2008, so it is a fairly new building. Previous to the elevated station, Polies lived and worked in the dome, which you can see in at the top of the above picture. One of the reasons for the different design on the new station, is that buildings on the ground tend to develop big drifts, especially in the winter, when the winds pick up. In the picture, the dome is slowly being buried. With the station on stilts, snow blows under it. There is still a massive drift (~12ft high) that builds up on the pole side of the station, but it isn't against the station.
The station itself is split into A and B pod. Each pod is composed of four modules in a U shape. The arms of the U are the berthing area, with accommodations for about 30 people in each module.

A1, second floor, where I live

In the middle of this hall, to the right.

In the winter only A1 and B1 are used to house people, and some folks get double rooms, depending on how many seasons on the ice they have.
The bottoms of the each of the Us form one long hallway, with various rooms towards the pole side of the building.

One long hallway

So, starting from the far end of A pod (near the top of the station photo), and working our way forward, we have:

The galley, where the food comes from

The galley takes up all of A2. Then Medical takes up A3. Below them, on the first floor are:

The post office (closed for the season) and the station store.

 The station store sells snacks, some beer, wine, and liquor, toiletries, souvenirs, and lends movies.

The quiet reading room.

Arts and crafts

Then onto B pod.

The science lab takes up all of B2. 

It houses office space for all three RAs (Sue, Ethan, and me), the scientists from SPT, BICEP2, and IceCube, and the Meteorology folks. It also has roof access for a couple of cameras mounted on top of the station. The cameras here are the main reason that all the windows on station have to be blocked for the winter. They are very sensitive to stray light. Below the science lab is the green house and the emergency power plant.

Across the hall is the B1 lounge, which has the pool table, more books, a bar, and a TV room.

B3 is mainly offices and conference rooms on the second floor. The first floor has the laundry room, the IT office and a display for various pole artifacts.

A conference room

Coms. Pretty dead right now, but it gets a lot of use during the summer,
when planes are coming in and out.

Pole markers from the past. We are currently getting
ready to make the 2012 pole marker.

Finally we get to B4, which is taken up mainly by the gym. The music room is also here.

The cardio and lifting area

The gym

In pole news this week, we had an emergency drill on Wednesday. An accident in the power plant, with four casualties. The trauma team got to practice triage and burn treatment.

Getting our red patient packaged to move to medical

We had one green patient (walking wounded), one yellow patient (needs attention in the next couple of hours) with an electrical burn, a red patient (above, needs immediate medical attention) who was unconscious and had smoke inhalation, and a black patient (dead/dying).

Bigger versions of this week's photos can be found here.