Wow, I know I talk a lot about nights being crazy and hectic, but this one wins. Hands down.
I woke up about half an hour before my alarm was set to booms and incoming alarms and general chaos. I was already sleeping really poorly in the tent so this certainly fitting. The first round of alarms went off for about 40 minutes before they sounded the all clear. Just when I was about to emerge to the head to the showers, I hear an enormous, jarring "crrraacccckkkkk" noise and I actually swore out loud the incoming was so close. Then another serious of booms and alarms went off and the long and the short of it is, we were attacked for almost two hours.
When I got to the office we were trying to do accountability both with our team and the new team, which was a nightmare. Two of the new team members had left for dinner in between the two attacks and we had no idea where they were until we got a call from Air Force Persco saying that they had bunkered down with our two team members.
Once things settled down at the office, I came to find the replacement team member I am supposed to be training does not have access to log onto government computers so we can't do any training! So I am trying to cover the emergency message queue by myself and train her at the same time on one computer.
THEN around 2:00am the Red Cross emergency casework system goes down. At first I didn't think much of it because this occurence is pretty common. But then 15 mins passess, 30 mins passes and by this point I've called Kuwait and learned they are down and then I call the National Headquarters to find out that the system is down worldwide! So! No more training for the night.
THEN about an hour later the system comes up only for the caseworkers in the US, where people are starting emergency messages. A supervisor in the States calls me and tells me that the US caseworkers are going to start passing me the messages over the phone so that I can then pass them over the phone a second time, all without access to the casework system and while training to train my replacement! As soon as the supervisor hangs up the phone lights up with US caseworkers trying to call out there cases and I am getting so many calls from the US I can't deliver a single message in Afghanistan.
Suffice to say I am completely exhausted, but one of our neighbor units is hosting us a pancake breakfast so it's not quite bedtime yet!
I woke up about half an hour before my alarm was set to booms and incoming alarms and general chaos. I was already sleeping really poorly in the tent so this certainly fitting. The first round of alarms went off for about 40 minutes before they sounded the all clear. Just when I was about to emerge to the head to the showers, I hear an enormous, jarring "crrraacccckkkkk" noise and I actually swore out loud the incoming was so close. Then another serious of booms and alarms went off and the long and the short of it is, we were attacked for almost two hours.
When I got to the office we were trying to do accountability both with our team and the new team, which was a nightmare. Two of the new team members had left for dinner in between the two attacks and we had no idea where they were until we got a call from Air Force Persco saying that they had bunkered down with our two team members.
Once things settled down at the office, I came to find the replacement team member I am supposed to be training does not have access to log onto government computers so we can't do any training! So I am trying to cover the emergency message queue by myself and train her at the same time on one computer.
THEN around 2:00am the Red Cross emergency casework system goes down. At first I didn't think much of it because this occurence is pretty common. But then 15 mins passess, 30 mins passes and by this point I've called Kuwait and learned they are down and then I call the National Headquarters to find out that the system is down worldwide! So! No more training for the night.
THEN about an hour later the system comes up only for the caseworkers in the US, where people are starting emergency messages. A supervisor in the States calls me and tells me that the US caseworkers are going to start passing me the messages over the phone so that I can then pass them over the phone a second time, all without access to the casework system and while training to train my replacement! As soon as the supervisor hangs up the phone lights up with US caseworkers trying to call out there cases and I am getting so many calls from the US I can't deliver a single message in Afghanistan.
Suffice to say I am completely exhausted, but one of our neighbor units is hosting us a pancake breakfast so it's not quite bedtime yet!
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