Aaaaaaaahhh!!!!! H2S!

I just returned from my very first trip ever to Fort McMurray... the nicest city that is just too far away. Honestly, I was quite impressed with the city in general, they are doing an amazing job considering how quickly they are growing and how quickly it could become a shanty town (except for the cold winters of course). This is the modern day equivalent of the gold rush.

After 6 days of training in Calgary and another full day of training in Fort McMurray, we were finally allowed to start our jobs. Painting pipes. Wahoo! All that build up and tension for such a menial task, or so it seemed...

Day One on the job: the hydrogen sulphide gas alarm goes off on the site next to ours (quick info: H2S is extremely deadly even in low doses and sinks, going downwind) and you guessed it...we are downwind from that next site. So what do Cathy and I do? We look at each other blankly, both of us thinking "we should be running, but to where?" In order to get out of the site we were on, we would have to drive right past the building where the alarm is going off. Not only this, but we were alone and had no idea who to call to find out what to do, etc etc. So like idiots in a duck pond, we just stood there, holding our personal H2S monitors in front of us waiting for them to go off. They never did.

A couple of variations of the above scenario have happened again, but these involved fire alarms which we just ignored, figuring that we would see flames if they came to close. (H2S is invisible)

Such is the life of two expendible summer students in the Oil Sands.