...who was using MEK to melt the ice in the holes used for the guard rails at an LF.LOL, sounds like a typical MMT team. I'd have used a benzene torch instead of an extremely flammable solvent that would have sent it's heat directly into the air instead of down the tubes. Most of us stationed in northern tier bases learned how to deal with snow and ice quite quickly.
We captured a half dozen snow white rabbits one day in the middle of winter with a foot of snow on the ground. Lightly painted three of them florescent orange and the others florescent red and then let them go in the WSA. The next day a whole MMT team came into our break room all excited about the exotic colored bunnies they saw running around the guard shack. These guys thought Montana was the strangest place on Earth. I was sitting with my CMSgt who was clueless to what we had done, yet being an intelligent man not inclined to gullibility he simply looked at me, grinned and under his breath asked me if I had been performing LLCs on the local indigenous 'wabbits', and then proceeded to call me Elmer Fudd for the next two years.