The likelihood that COVID had snuck onto the vessel and then not been detected in the form of an outbreak was slim at best. The Willem de Vlamingh was designated a “green” or “clean” vessel, meaning everyone who got on it from abroad was PCR-tested multiple times before being quarantined and then sent straight to the boat.
And yet in this particular case, even the CDC stamp seems of questionable value. The above image shows part of a form for requesting medical help for crew, showing the “three stamps” required.ĬOVID-19, of course, has added an extra hurdle for those entering the country, which even Taiwanese citizens are subject to. It is unclear whether this case was expedited in some way because of the severity of the situation. Given these hurdles, it seems miraculous that he got off the vessel in an hour. Approvals were required from the National Immigration Agency, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Maritime Ports Bureau. I was stunned to learn that as this injured man lay near death, the ship managers had to get sign-off from three separate government entities. While Taiwanese nationals or those with ARC (Alien Residency Certificate) cards only require CDC permission to come ashore during an emergency, foreign workers are effectively trapped on their ships until burdensome paperwork can be processed. Regardless of the exact interval, it was too long for the life-threatening circumstances, and the man died en route to the hospital.įoreign offshore workers are uniquely vulnerable in a medical emergency. Hospital transport was delayed because of COVID concerns one source estimated the delay at half an hour others put it at over an hour. The vessel was docked a short drive from the National Cheng Kung hospital in Tainan, and under normal circumstances, EMTs could have had him there in 15 minutes. The critically injured worker needed to get to the hospital as quickly as possible, but first, the ship managers had to scramble to get permission to bring him on shore. He was crushed by a hydraulic door on October 9th and discovered at 5:30p.m. He was working in the engine room of the Willem De Vlamingh, a support vessel for Belgium dredger and EPCI group Jan de Nul.
The incident involved an Indonesian crew member on his first day on the job at wpd’s Yunlin OWF, according to multiple sources off-the-record. Still, this was the first work-related death I’d heard of in an emerging industry, so I asked around about it.Īs I gathered more details, I became increasingly concerned. The story, while tragic, wasn’t something I could cover for the Taipei Times, where I worked as a business reporter at the time. In late October, I got a confidential tipoff that a worker had died while building Taiwan’s offshore wind farms two weeks earlier.