Drill, baby, drill: Lessons on emergency response in the shop
People often ask me what life on a submarine was like, and while movies and Tom Clancy novels play up the tense moments of silence and unfathomable escapes from enemy torpedoes, what I remember most was the monotony of it all—doing the same thing over and over.
For me, it started with six hours on watch staring at lazy green acoustic data falling down my CRT screens and listening through my headphones for contacts among the ocean’s symphony of white noise and chattering creatures. Then chow, cleaning, maintenance, training, and maybe a movie, before six hours of sleep. Then we’d do it all over again.
On certain days of the week, we’d do any number of drills, like a fire in the engine room, a hot run in the torpedo room, or the odd reactor leak.
If these were real, any one of them would mean doom for the crew if we didn’t respond with brisk efficiency and confidence. And every submariner was taught that their job in each situation was absolutely vital. Even a less glamorous task like retrieving firefighting gear for the designated responder was important, as every second counts when the smoke has nowhere to go and there’s plenty of oil, grease, and flesh for flames to consume. But you can’t think about that. You can only think about doing your mundane task at the moment as fast as possible without tripping or knocking someone else over. And to get to that point, you have to practice. And we did. Over and over. With every conceivable disaster that could befall a sub, throwing in variations to simulate real-life situations, like obscuring our emergency air breathing masks with hairnets to replicate smoke.
Now did we ever have to use those skills in real life? The only real fire I can recall was when a young machinist mate put a metal coffee thermos in the microwave. Aside from some sparks, nothing happened, but the crew still went through the same motions as if it was a lube pump. There were other types of close calls where most of us had no idea how close we were to being crab food but heard about someone’s quick-thinking heroics.
When getting nostalgic with my buddy about the good ol’ days in underwater hell, though, the guys who behaved correctly under pressure get far less discussion than the ones who didn’t. Just because we always had to be ready for anything doesn’t mean everyone was. We’d sometimes pretend an enemy sub appeared out of nowhere and fired at us, so we could practice evasive maneuvers and get a quick firing solution. We all knew the drill, but what everyone would hear over the 1MC speakers was “Torpedo in the water!” It was one sea pup’s first underway, and he didn’t know it was a drill. He was in control and saw everyone jump into action, and his immediate reaction was basically, “We’re all gonna die.”
So he sat down and started sobbing. He didn’t last long on the boat.
And while the crew found this young man’s trauma quite hilarious (well, the more demented among us, anyways), if he had a vital role in an emergency and fell apart like that…Well, you know what they say: dead men tell no tales.
Drilling for a safe shop
Hopefully, this tale will get you to examine how to make your shop “shipshape,” ready for anything, especially fires.
We have a great piece by Lucas Roberto on how to do that here. He talked to several veteran firefighters, including Capt. Mike Daley, chief training officer and fire officer with Fire Service Performance Concepts.
He talked about a time he responded to a vehicle fire just outside a repair facility, and a quick-thinking employee shut the bay doors to protect the shop. But Daley also mentioned another time a tech tried to move a burning fuel tank outside the shop, and “the fuel started to spill and the fire started to spread.”
Timothy S. Cowan, deputy fire chief for the DeWitt Fire District in New York, also brought up how in a large shop with dozens of bays, if a fire broke out at one end, how do you let the other end know?
If you don’t have answers, and if you’re unsure of how your employees (and yourself) will respond, make it a priority to contact your local fire department and get an action plan in place. With their help, you’ll find some answers real quick.
Then brainstorm all the other scenarios that could go wrong in the shop, and come up with a response for those, too. Maybe it’s what to do if a drum of engine oil gets knocked over or if a truck slips off a lift. And walk through what to do with every member of the shop. And find time to run surprise drills. Incentivize good responses and coach up poor ones.
After a short time, you’ll make these stressful situations mundane as well, while building camaraderie in the shop and proving to your workers that you put their safety first. It’ll be extra time spent not directly impacting uptime, but maybe you’ll find you have a more close-knit crew willing to help each other out in other monotonous shop tasks. At worst, at least you’ll know one small fire won’t lead to the loss of your business and the people in it.
For more on shop safety:
