GIGO

So What's Risky?

So there I was, crawling carefully over the broken sea ice away from our semi-sunken personnel carrier hoping that everyone would get out OK and wondering just how long the thing would float in the chilly Antarctic waters. There had been 14 of us in the two-part Hagglunds vehicle which had been trundling across the ice to pick up a seal researcher when it hit soft ice.

Instead of standing well above my head, the top of the Hagglunds was now at waist height, ice and snow covering the water in which it floated. Those inside were startled to look out the window and see boots instead of faces.

We hauled the survival gear off the top of the rear cab and used the wooden crack-crossing planks to make a bridge to the emergency window exit to get people out. Everyone seemed to know what to do -- the calmness and speed of response of the Scott Base support staff and researchers involved had me thinking that this sort of thing was a part of normal operations in the Antarctica. It wasn't until later that I found out that this was the first time in 12 years of Hagglunds' use that one had actually broken through the ice.

I had a digital camera with me, a DC120 courtesy of Kodak, and the resulting photos made the event look extremely dramatic, much more so than it had been (the first five minutes of ice-crawling notwithstanding!). Yet the actual risk involved was reasonably slight -- Hagglunds are amphibious vehicles, we had all the safety and survival gear required, everyone had had training for living and working in Antarctica. We were on our way in an hour or so, after another Hagglunds arrived to help haul our one out of its hole.

A comment later from Scott Base Operations Manager Rex Hendry about the difference between perceived risk and real risk reminded me of one extreme example that did not end so happily. Who would have thought there was danger in some office mates taking a jog in the Waitakeres on their lunch-break? Yet an attempt at a short-cut combined with a quick change in the weather led to the deaths of three people.

And we think that Antarctica is an unforgiving country...

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.