Two dead at U.S. Antarctic station
An accident of some kind has apparently killed two individuals at the U.S. McMurdo station in Antarctica yesterday.
The National Science Foundation says two technicians working on a fire-suppression system at an Antarctica scientific station were found unconscious and died.
The foundation said Wednesday the two had been working in a building at McMurdo Station, which is on Ross Island. It says they were found on the floor by a helicopter pilot who had landed after spotting what appeared to be smoke from the building.
Nothing more is as yet known.
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An accident of some kind has apparently killed two individuals at the U.S. McMurdo station in Antarctica yesterday.
The National Science Foundation says two technicians working on a fire-suppression system at an Antarctica scientific station were found unconscious and died.
The foundation said Wednesday the two had been working in a building at McMurdo Station, which is on Ross Island. It says they were found on the floor by a helicopter pilot who had landed after spotting what appeared to be smoke from the building.
Nothing more is as yet known.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Hmmm, did they see a dog running around?
This unfortunately sounds like a malfunction or a misfiring of the system that they were installing, if I were to take a wild guess. Fire suppression systems starve fire of oxygen and any thing else that is enveloped by it.
????
Halon
Are there not far better alternates to halon?
I forget the product name (Novek?) but I remember a product that suppressed the fire but did not remove the all the O2. It was also nonconductive- you could submerse a laptop in it without fear of shorting it out.
Perhaps halon is required in the cold of Antarctica but the risks are well known and I think alternatives exist.
Wodun
good one.
Chris–
(thanks for that tidbit!)
here we go…. ( it’s a fluoroketone, “developed as a halon replacement and hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) alternative.” )
“3M Brand Novec 1230” Fire Protection Fluid
https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/novec-us/applications/fire-suppression/
(with embedded video)
“Novec 1230 fluid extinguishes a fire before it starts by rapidly removing heat. In a typical total flooding system, the fluid is stored as a liquid in cylinders pressurized with nitrogen. Automatic detection sensors trigger release when the fire is at the incipient stage, extinguishing it in mere seconds. Novec 1230 fluid evaporates 50 times faster than water. In fact, you could soak a paperback book in a bath of Novec 1230 fluid and within a minute, pick it up and read where you left off.”
“The Thing” (1951)
-excerpt-
https://youtu.be/tp1UPGesJCE
1:46