Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I've Fallen, And I Can't Get Up

We've been doing mostly rehearsals now. Today we're in Hilo, which is on the east side of the big island in Hawaii. Once a week the ship does a training drill that is for crew only. Usually there will be an announcement that says the code for a fire in a specific zone. If you are crew and you are not on an emergency team you continue doing whatever you were doing.

Once the mock problem with the ship results in the possible need to abandon ship (and it usually does) they sound the alarm for everyone to go to their muster stations to prepare to get on the life rafts. For us this means going down one floor, grabbing a life jacket, and waiting until the drill is over. I learned a lesson on a prior ship and it still holds true. The Safety Officer came by our station and said "who wants to be in a wheelchair?" I raised my hand and was picked. Now I had a new job. He told me to go to a stairwell and sit down with a sign that said "I need a wheelchair." There was also another crew member in my stairwell with a sign that said "my chest hurts and I'm having trouble breathing."

Each deck and stariwell has an evacuation team...this team had two problems to deal with and did great getting the solutions. Within just a couple minutes four crew with a wheelchair came to get me to my station, and as I was going down I saw the stretcher team come up to get the other "passenger." Apparently Jen and Larrance got to play a mother and child who were separated. So, the lesson learned: play a victim in a drill...it is more exciting.

Other than that, today we went to Ken's Pancake House. Open 24 hours and delicious. We'll probably be back.

Tomorrow is our first show. We're all veterans and I think we could have pulled this show off the first day we got here. The nice thing about being at that level is that we've been really fine tuning and doing intricate work that we might not have had time for if we were greener.

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