(U) 3.3.2013 - Water Pumps and No Sleep

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Yes, yes, yes. You're right, you're right, I know: you're right. It's
March. I haven't updated since December. I'm terrible. And now we're
moving on.

I'm starting with the most recent and will go back from there.

For those of you who have talked to me, you might know that this
deployment has been more difficult for me than any of my past 3. I'm not
sure why; perhaps I'm just too old for the sleep deprivation that you'll
hear in my first story. ;)

The weather here is terrible! Not any worse than at 'home' up north. In
fact, not as bad. However, being in uniform presents the challenge of
not being able to layer the way that I would in freezing weather.
Anyway, the weather seemed to be improving. It was hitting mid-50s
during the day (not that I ever experience that - I sleep right through
it), and nights were hovering right around freezing, maybe a couple of
degrees above. Life was grand. And then it started raining. It rained
until everything was saturated and muddy... and then it started snowing.
We discovered a few weeks ago that when this happens all the (incredibly
wet) snow became insta-slush on top of the puddles that we already have.
Essentially, we're swimming through slush-water to work. (Ok, that might
be a LITTLE bit of an exaggeration... we can avoid most of the big
puddles on the way). Apparently the area behind our Bhut (living
quarters - plywood shack, essentially) floods quite quickly. And it
really can be a swimming pool back there (sorry you'll miss the 'pool'
again, Michelle). Anyway, some of the brilliant minds that are here
decided to put a diesel generator-driven water pump right behind our
Bhut and run it to suck all of the water from the low point in our
housing area - right behind our Bhut - and send it to the drainage ditch
(which, brilliantly, is not at a low point and therefore almost never
has water in it). There were a few problems with this plan; we
discovered the first within a few hours of them turning the pump on for
the first time.

I was in the office when one of my teammates ran in to the office
frazzledly (yes, I made it up... leave it alone) around midnight to call
the MPs and the fire department. She was concerned about the fumes
coming into our rooms from the generator (carbon monoxide an'at).
Everybody had headaches and were coughing so she woke everyone up and
got them out of the Bhut, ran to the office and made some calls, and
told them to bring some oxygen with them. Next morning at 1030 (my sleep
time): same thing. And at 1700 (also my sleep time). And that night. And
the following morning at 1030... you get the idea. Three days of
on-and-off noxious fumes coming into our rooms until we found the right
person (each time) who was either 'allowed' to turn off the generator or
who decided to turn it off for the well-being of those involved (even if
they technically shouldn't have been). Those were days fraught with
calls made to the companies involved and arguments with the supervisors
on site who claimed that if we were poisoned it was "not my problem". In
the midst of this, we night-shifters were only getting a couple hours of
sleep because we'd go to sleep and then be awakened either by the pump
or the fumes (if we managed to sleep through the noise). One night I
walked back into the Bhut after being out for a couple of hours and
started gagging as soon as I walked in the door because the generator
had been on for a couple of hours. Finally, the sun did its job (I
maintain that the pump had nothing to do with it) and the lake out back
dried up enough for them to remove the pump. And then last night? We
slept. Oh, did we sleep. But I still have a headache.

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