by Bonnie Brady
When rescuers must negotiate turbine hazards before reaching casualties, the people waiting pay for every lost minute. Three recent developments demand answers.
On September 22, Green Oceans announced that it had located a wreck believed to be the F/V Mistress, 50 feet from Block Island Wind Farm’s Turbine 1. Two fishermen died when Mistress sank in January 2019. Coast Guard records cited by the group identify dangerous weather and nearby turbines among the circumstances that curtailed the helicopter search.
On October 3, the Coast Guard William Sparling departed New London around 1:30 a.m. to join the search for Canadian air ambulance HTT104 south of Nantucket. Its route went around wind project areas.
On October 14, an MH-60 Jayhawk was dispatched for the HOS Rocinante medevac near Sunrise Wind. The Coast Guard’s ten-minute estimate on Marine Channel 16 included the condition that it could “make way of the wind farm.” The reported descent to the helipad lasted 12 minutes in clear weather.
A ferry passenger, fisherman or sailor in distress deserves to know what those obstacles mean for reaching them.
The Mistress discovery raises another question: when did Ørsted learn what lay beside its turbine?
The Washington Times reports maintenance began there in April 2019. BOEM documented partial boat debris in its 2020 report. Ørsted, majority owned by Denmark’s government, stood to benefit from Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind approvals, granted under Biden in 2023 and 2024.
Did information remain undisclosed to protect those approvals? Investigators should subpoena maintenance records, dive logs and communications with regulators.
Warnings preceded construction: Cape Wind radar work in 2008, Coast Guard findings in 2020 and the National Academies’ 2022 report. Fishermen warned about radar interference and rescue difficulties. Approval did not erase those dangers.
Washington should halt offshore wind construction and launch an independent federal investigation. Congress should demand navigation logs and an accounting of all time involved. Reopen the Mistress investigation. Examine turbine effects on radar, rescue access, response times and SAROPS, the Coast Guard’s search planning system. Publish the evidence and require sworn testimony before construction restarts.
Those that work or travel in the ocean deserve answers. A person waiting for rescue cannot recover the minutes lost getting there. The families of the men aboard Mistress deserve answers. So does every family that could face the next emergency.
For more information: https://www.green-oceans.org/