Waiting for the wave on the ramp in my boatsuit as I had come straight from SAR.

Evacuated to the traverse waiting…
At 6am on Saturday morning the fire alarm went off so we dragged ourselves out of bed (only half hour early in my case) to the tagging board all thinking bad thoughts about the person who had burnt the toast. Well it wasn’t toast… The Base Commander had been called by BAS as due to the Chilean earthquake the USCG had put out a tsunami watch for the Antarctic Peninsula including where Rothera is! We were told originally that it was meant to hit at 7am and we were given the option to make our own choice as to what we wanted to do. However, the watch was changed to a warning that we could see this wave hit Rothera at 10am so John made the decision to require a full evacuation of station.

All the airplanes were to take to the skies and head towards the Falklands. Everyone involved in the air unit went to work to get all the planes in the air by 9:30am and that meant that I had to provide SAR cover with the boat until they were in the air before retreating with the rest of the base up the ramp to the high ground of the traverse. The heavy machinery was taken to as high ground as possible. Survival and SAR equipment was taken up to the caboose including tents set up and extra food. So it was all go on base. In the end there was a 20cm rise in sea level for a short period of time. So lots of excitement at Rothera.