Two Sides of the Emergency: Offshore Response vs. Onshore Failures

Maartje van Krieken: Hi, welcome for tuning in today. At this is episode 13 of the Business Emergency Room. And I would like to think I'm not superstitious, but 13, you know, isn't for often, an unlucky number. And considering we talk about emergencies, I wanted to do something special with this episode, and so we're gonna do some reverse triage, looking at an incident that happened where my guest and I were both on different sides of the same incident, and so we can talk about both sides sites. My guest today is my husband, Eelco, and the incident we're going to talk about is an incident that happened on November 8, 2017 in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, I was working in oil and gas operations for the Gulf of Mexico, and Eelco was also working for the same company, but in a very different department that in itself, didn't have anything to do with the Gulf of Mexico operations. However, the operations team, so my peers had invited ilko and a another individual who actually had a dotted line working in my team, were requested to go out to one of the offshore assets to do an asset integrity type review, which is in, which is in his wheelhouse, and towards the end of the trip, an incident happened on the offshore platform. We are not going to talk about all the ins and outs of the incident. We are very specifically going to talk about the topics of communication and the incident, and we're going to talk about some of the things that went very well and some of the things that we can all learn from. We're not going to talk about the technicality of the incident and the courses and all that, all those pieces, because that is not our place on this podcast here today. So Eelco, did you want to start off? Yeah. What happened?

Yeah. So thanks very much to inviting me to this and to share, share my story or my side of the story that happened that, that fateful day. So yeah, I was, I was on this platform, which was just over 100 kilo, over 100 miles in the Gulf of Mexico. We were only to supposed to be there for about two, two to three days to do this audit or investigation together with my colleague, and what happened was that we completed all our work, and we were about to fly out the next morning, but on the third night, we stayed over there. In the middle of the night, there was a very loud bang, and a lot of alarms started to go off. There were lights, there were flashes, and we were asleep. Of course it was. It was half past one in the morning, and at that point in time, we woke up, and the alarm is going off, and we don't know what's going on, and somebody runs into our little sleeping area and opens the door, and there's a massive, big flame outside, and I could actually feel and smell this, the raw hydrocarbons burning. So all hands on deck, and there was nothing else we could do, so we had to abandon the platform and leave in an emergency lifeboat. So I got dressed, put my Cove rolls on, put my shoes on, didn't have any time to grab anything, and I just followed suit with the rest of the crew to this emergency lifeboat, and we all got in, all 46 of us, and went down into the water and sealed off away from the platform to safety. And I have to say, it was a very surreal experience. It's something that we've all been trained for. If you go and work offshore, you do your training, your emergency reaction, what you should do in those circumstances, but when it actually happens, it's, you know, you never know how you're going to react. And I have to say, I sort of followed what I was told. Followed because I wasn't very familiar with the platform. So I followed everybody to the live boat. We got down, and then we sailed away, and within about, I think 10 or 15 minutes, we made contact with the nearby platform. But because they also had limited capacity, we couldn't go there. So the only option was to go away from the platform to a supply boat who happened to be in the field. So we were say. Away on the platform of on the on the lifeboat and calling onto this, this, this, this supply boat, and arrived there and sort of in shock, didn't know really what happened. I hadn't brought anything with me. I literally had not even socks on, just coveralls in my shoes. Fortunately, one of my crewmates actually brought a cell phone and we had some reception, so we passed around the phone to make a call, and I just, first of all, of course, called Maartje. I said, Yes, there was an explosion on the platform. I'm okay. You know, we're safe, we're and the other thing I said, tell the kids I love them. And have no idea of why I said that, but at that point you are sort of in shock. And that's all, yeah, that came into my head. So yeah, it was a very surreal experience.

Maartje van Krieken: So he actually also told me in that call that he had nothing, not even his wedding ring. In hindsight, very sweet. You mentioned that. So on my end, I'm actually non really good at answering my phone at all hours of the day, but somehow in that moment, I did, and so the phone went off. And we have friends all over the world, and sometimes people forget time differences. So I look at the screen and it actually lists the place where the call is coming from as one of the places where I know a heliport is and to go offshore. And so considering that my husband is offshore, I'm like, Oh, this is not good. I actually also had one or two of the kids in bed, which is not that usual, so I was also like, they're asleep, but I answered the call, and so it was Eelco saying the platform was exploded, or something along those lines. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm on a boat. I don't have anything, but I'm okay, and please tell the kids, I love them. And it's somebody else's phone. So it's somebody else's turn something along those lines. And so he hung up. I, of course, was intimately familiar with the operations that were going on in the Gulf of Mexico and on this particular platform, so I immediately knew that this was not another Deepwater Horizon. So this platform is not super active. It's not actively drilling, and it's mainly used to some kind of booster station or pumping station, to transport hydrocarbons that are coming from much further out in the field to this platform, where then it gets pumped up and then it gets brought to shore. So a different situation. I also knew he was okay. I know how evacuation procedures work. He told me that everybody had gotten off. So although, of course, it's a shock to get a call like that in the morning, I had a lot of contextual information. I have great trust in the emergency response systems and how they work, and that people train those and that they work. And so the fact that I knew it happened, but I also already knew he was okay, made it for me, also Yeah, made it a little weird I was, but I wasn't worried so much about him anymore, right? And but then I was lying in bed, and, of course, I could also couldn't sleep anymore, and it's like, you know, two in the morning or whatever time it was. So I'm also not gonna call anybody, like family in Europe. I probably could have called at the time, dude. What am I gonna say? Eelco's been in an incident, and I know nothing yet, but he's fine. I would have freaked people out, right? So I was kind of like, what do I do now? And then I started thinking about the partners, right? The other partners, because a lot of people who permanently work offshore and work in these rotations don't have to live close, right? So many of them live all over the US, and in their two weeks off, or three weeks off, or whatever their rotation is, they they travel back to wherever their house is. And so I have no and for some of these people, there is a there's a wife, or some of these people, there's parents, but all of them got to call somebody, and I wonder, I was starting to wonder whether all of them had also received one of these, like, 90 seconds calls with limited information, and then not having the context I have about, you know, what this platform is, and remembering the pictures of the Deepwater Horizon, or what other people refer to As the BP oil spill, yeah. And then maybe thinking of stories like that. So I was lying in bed, and it was, it was, I definitely started spinning a little bit and thinking, Well, you know, is there then the number to call or how? I don't actually know how, on the onshore side. Now, the procedures and the processes work. Yeah. And of course, he doesn't normally go so maybe the other partners or spouses have numbers to call or things to do, yeah. And in theory, I should also know, because I'm on the other side, right. So I made it through the rest of the night, and early in the morning, I dropped the kids off at school, and just as I dropped them off and I was waiting for an Uber to take me to the office, I got a call from Eelco's boss's boss. So the procedure is that the notification if something happens goes through your line manager. But Eelco's direct manager was on a business trip or unavailable. So then it went up another line. But he works in a somewhat complex organization where people have global roles. So I was actually speaking to somebody I knew, but who was at the time in Southeast Asia. And so the message had made it through the system. And so he calls me, and he said, Hey, Maartje, I'm sorry that I have to call you with this message. But first of all, I want to tell you, Eelco is okay. And I said, yeah, yeah. I know I spoke to him immediately. So he said, Oh, okay, so you already know what happened. I said, Because. He said, Yeah, I'm calling you because support, as per the system, I'm supposed to notify you that there was an incident on the platform, that they're all okay, and they all managed to evacuate, and now they're working on getting these guys to shore, and I believe that they're on the next the next platform over. And I said, No, they're not on the next platform over, because that that platform doesn't is not allowed to take all these people on board because it's not rated for the those that many people, and then it doesn't have enough lifeboat. But they're all on a supply vessel. Last time I talked it, and he's like, oh, okay, so you know a little more than I do. And I said, Yeah, and I'm about to go into the office and and I assume that I will be able to find out more there. So it doesn't really make sense for you to then, you know, get relayed messages all the way to where you are in Southeast Asia for them to call me back. So I said to him that I was okay and he was gonna text me whenever he had so many new just in case I didn't get the same information. And he gave me his number, and he said, Call me if you need to find out more of you there was a lot of care. But I said, it's a little ridiculous for you to try and keep me in the loop. So I went on the way to the to the office, and I was and at that moment, one of my friends who works in the oil industry was texting back to a mess conversation we started the evening before. So I'm like, Oh, good, she's awake, so I gave her a quick call so that at least could tell somebody what happened. Right? So that was good, and it was really interesting to have colleagues or peers who can and, yeah, who can place this right, who have an idea what this means, and are not necessarily either panicking, but understand that it's a little weird and you want to tell somebody, but that is also okay and is not going to then, you know, leave your call with a worry. And then I called my boss because I was actually hosting 60 people for a multiple day work session. And these were internal colleagues, but they traveled in from all over the world. And so I was a little bit like, well, I don't know if my day is going to be so normal, so I better give her a heads up that you know this is happening. And then the answer was, oh, you're not supposed to. I don't think she realized, or didn't hear the piece where I said that ilko was before, so the first thing I heard was that there was instructions being relayed, saying we don't know the details yet, so we're not talking about the instant until we know more. And I say, Yeah, but I know more because my husband was on the platform. So it was a really weird conversation, and we also had a really bad connection. So I was like, Okay, well, I'll find out when I get to the office. So yeah, I got to the office, and I managed to share with a few people, with my team and colleagues, what had happened. So at least there were some people around me who knew that I was a little bit weird on my feet with with all this going on, and yeah, I started as best as I could with my workday, because there was also not much else I could do, because I was, I was and am not, or I was, at the time, not part of the emergency response structure, because I'd only been in That team since about two months, or in that role two or three months. So yeah, I wasn't, I didn't have a formal role to play in the response to this incident.

Yeah. So meanwhile, we were on this boat, this supply ship, and everybody is walking around. So what happens? You know, where are we? We could see that the platform not so far away from it, but this big, you know, flame coming out of the side. But somehow, because you're all in the same situation, and everybody's working offshore, there's this this feeling of, well, we're honest, this together, we somehow need to deal with it. So when we arrived there, they literally, they started making pizza for us. They made sure everybody had a place to sit down to talk to each other, and we just had to wait what what would happen next? So and, and there were a few things that really stuck in my mind. Is, is this feeling of of community that were all the same situation. I literally was climbing up the stairs to go on this boat. And the one of the workers who was actually really close to the incident when it happened, who I could see had his his hair was, was like singed, and he asked me if I was okay because he knew I was not familiar with the platform, so he was asking if I wasn't okay. And I said to him, are you okay? I mean, man, you weren't so close to what happened. And said, yeah, yeah, no, I'm fine. I'm and I'm feeling okay. I'm not hurt, but I later on heard he had a concussion, and it was some more issues, but just this feeling of, hey, we're all in this together. We're looking after each other. Was, was even in that moment of crisis and emergency was, was quite incredible, actually. So anyway, we were on the boat middle of the night, waiting for, you know, further activities. And as much explained, the other platform couldn't take us on. So the only way to actually get everybody back to the beach, because that was the only place we could go, was to get lifted by the crane from the supply boat onto the platform, and from then with the helicopter to go to the beach. So they did that in various batches, because it was about about an hour flight to go,

Maartje van Krieken: Yeah, so the beaches is the shore, yeah, the heliport on shore.

So they we went in batches of about 10 to 15 people. So it took, I think, towards the early morning to get us all to the heliport where we were contained in a certain area, because it wasn't, you know, an official incident, so they had to get the official investigators coming into interviews and talk about what happened. So fortunately, I didn't know the opportunity to give Margie a call. However, she couldn't pick up her phone, so left her a message. But that's the only thing I could do. And the strange thing is that you assume that the world knows that this happened, but nobody knew it was seven o'clock in the morning. Eight o'clock in the morning, there's no news. There's nothing. I mean, there's no but in your mind, because you were there, you think everybody knows. So when you talk to others, you think, Well, you know, there was an incident, and we're all safe, so you know, we'll move on and we'll figure out what what happened. But nobody know. So I left my chair message, yeah.

Maartje van Krieken: And so by then it he left me a message towards the second half of the morning. So we, I will have not entirely sure the timeline, but I assume that the helicopters didn't start flying till daylight. So and then it took a few batches. Yeah, they were in groups, put on the platform and then flown to shore. So by the time he left me a message, it was end of the morning. So I then I knew he was on when I got the message, I realized he was on the show unshore Even he was fine, and that it was also very likely that I would at least be able to see him that day and that he would be coming home. So that was great. I also knew that he didn't have anything, including his car keys, and so that he definitely was going to require transport at some point. And I also knew about that it's standard at that point for investigators to come right, so that it's not immediate that he was going to be able to leave the heliport that there is then government officials and other formal authorities showing up to talk to everybody and make a first first pass report of what happened. And they don't want everybody to disappear or to talk to a million other peoples. They want to get it directly from the horse's mouth. And so I also knew that it was going to be a few hours before, yeah, anything was going to happen. So I continued with work for a little bit again, a little bit more relief. And yeah, there was definitely people in the office who realized that, you know, who'd heard at least a little bit about that an incident had. Happened and realized that that ilko was there, and so we're inquiring with me how they were doing. My team is really helpful in in helping me get through the event that day and stepped up. And yeah, so I definitely felt care at an individual level, but from a from a company level, it been really quiet, and it took till 3pm I kid you not, 3pm before I got a formal call from the team on shore who was managing the incident. And this is the so of course, for the person calling me from the from the team, for them, it was also a little awkward, because they're not calling a person they don't know. They call me who they also work with, right? And so they're saying, Okay, this is your I'm formally calling you to inform you, as you've been informed by elko's manager that he's been in an instant. We've had two medifex and there was two people, eventually, at some point, who were transported elsewhere for some burn care and some assessments. Fortunately, relatively lights and those were the only, the only there was the only personal damage, but, and he was, and he told me in that moment, he said, Yeah, so there it isn't they're all okay. And he also told me that ilko was on a ship offshore, and that they were all there, apart from the two who were transported to a medical facility, and that they were going to transport them to the beach. And he also told me that he had booked that they had booked hotels for everybody near the heliport, so they could stay there at least today or that day, and then figure out beyond that tomorrow. So then I said to him, I said, Well, he's not on a ship, because I had a message at like 11am this morning that he was at the heliport. So that's four hours ago, I said. And they were all there, is my understanding by that, by that time, also, he is now about an hour, a little bit over an hour away from us, you know, after an incident like that, yeah, it's great that you have hotel rooms, and I guess that's probably also useful for people who live much further away, who don't have ID so then flying and stuff is also hard. But yeah, I would like to go get him more or get him home. Is that possible? Yeah, that was, of course, that's an unusual request. So he didn't have the answer to that. And he also said, that's actually quite awkward, right? That I'm telling you he's on a ship, and you already know that he's not, so then he says, well, then yeah, according to the protocols, this is what I have to tell you. So at the moment, I also don't know more, which is, of course, frustrating and very awkward, right? So by then, I was close to wrapping up the joint session that day. So once that was done, I actually I knew which heliport they they were transported to, so I just looked up the number of the helicopter company and I called because I didn't know whose phone he'd used. I had a voicemail, but I had no number to call back. So to call the heliport and the receptionist that the heliport was well trained and well instructed and said, I am not allowed to put anybody on the phone. If you want to talk to your husband, then you need to reach out to a company rep. Protocol says that I cannot. I cannot do that right, and that's actually totally exactly right, because they don't. Yeah, you they don't. She doesn't know what could be shared or what the story is. It's not her place. And so, yeah, she wouldn't tell me anything. And I thought, hey, well, she's actually right, of course. And then I but then I realized that I actually knew exactly who from, for instance, HR, and which other individuals from the office had gone to the heliport to meet everybody there. So I called back, and I asked for the HR rep, which is, which is, of course, an insider, an insider trail. I had to talk to somebody, so I got somebody on the phone and said, hey, it's, it's marcha ilko left me a message. I understand, or I'm assuming that the investigation is going to wrap up sometime soon. How is, how is? How can ilko get home? Yeah, I would like him to come home. I understand that the others are staying there. So should I drive down to come and get him, or whatever? Right? And they were very helpful and friendly. I. They even managed to get you on the phone for a little bit in that point you didn't quite know, but then they also said, Listen, we will make sure he comes home. We will figure out a way to get him back to New Orleans. And so we left it at that. And then as soon as I hung up, I realized through through another colleague of ours that the person ilko, the man ilko had gone out with, who was also a visitor at the platform and not a regular, that his spouse lives relatively close to New Orleans too, and based on his calls, had actually driven down to the heliport already to go and get him, and then I realized that she probably wasn't getting in or wasn't getting any answers, and didn't have a way to reach him, because she didn't know that there was a company rep inside the building. So I actually called back to the to the helicopter base to the same I talked to the same receptionist, and I said, I get it that you're not allowed to give me any information. But I know for a fact that there's at least one wife outside, and she's probably been there a while, and this is her name or her husband's name. And said, Can you? Can either you, or can you ask somebody from our company to go outside and meet her and at least explain to her how much longer she has to wait the stuff? Because I don't know if she realizes that there's an investigation going on and that it takes, that it takes, sometimes a few hours before people are released and before, and I don't think she knows anything, and so, yeah, she's probably panicking and kind of trying to figure out stuff. So and that, I know for a fact that that they did take care of that and went to talk to her. So that was great, but again, it was kind of weird and messy communication, and I had, have no idea what was communicated with any of the other, yeah, partners, spouses, friends, whoever, whoever was the next, yeah, the next of kin for the other people involved in the incident, yeah, apart from the people who were sent to medical facilities, because then there's another procedure that kicks in. So they were notified for sure, and brought over to meet their partners, wherever, wherever the medical facility was they were sent to. So yeah, at that point again, there's nothing much else I could do. So I went home, I went home, and we waited,

yeah. So meanwhile we were Yeah, put in our in an area where there was some interviews, everybody was individually asked to reflect on or to talk about the facts and talk about what happened so and then we had to wait until we were officially released. So they provided us with some food and socks, because I was still just in my coveralls and my shoes and no socks, so there was a bit more comfort to feel a little bit better. But like Maartje said, then sort of the plan stopped a little bit, and eventually we sort of hitched a ride with another person who came from a different platform to the heliport, who had his car in the car park, and was another colleague of mine, the two of us who wanted to go back to New Orleans, and both of us didn't have our car keys or anything, so we sort of hitched a ride with him and drove. And by that time, it was starting to get dark, and we drove back back to New Orleans, still a little bit, you know, dazed and confused. And yeah, what I then remember, I came home and I walked into the house, and, of course, I saw March. I gave her a big hug. And then my daughter, who was, she was about 466, at the time, yeah, yeah, six, six years old. She She grabbed me, and she said, Dad, you smell of airport because my coveralls had been, you know, exposed to the hydrocarbons, the gas, the smoke, and that's the person she said to me, and I will never forget those words. And then you really realize, Oh, I'm home, I'm safe, and I'm really safe now, because before, you don't really know what's happening. You know where you're going to be, what's going what you're going to be exposed to, but then when you're home, you know you're safe. Yeah, and I had a very, very strange night, I can tell you that night after the event, yeah. Yeah.

Maartje van Krieken: And it took also a few days. Were you good? Your wedding ring back?

Yeah. Oh. It took like two weeks before I had everything, everything, everything back,

Maartje van Krieken: but um, yeah. And the the moral of the story here is that also in the days after communication on shore remained very minimal and marginal. Yeah, yes, there was, there was, of course, communication about the incident and what had happened. And so the way to imagine the style of the incident is, if you have a gas stove, for instance, I think these days they have more safeties on them, but a gas stove that's been on without you knowing, and then when you light it, that gasho has to burn, and so you get this big flame. And so you have to imagine that that's effectively what happened on the platform. There was a ginormous gas release that all had to burn up. So it it by the time ilko was on the ship, or by the time he made it off the ship, the fire was largely done, right? It didn't take forever, but in the moment, you can imagine that, that is that the whole platform was in flames, and so, yeah, not safe to be on and but it wasn't, wasn't an incident that carried on for days the damage to the platform it's built for some of the stuff, so there's not a whole lot to melt or burn. So yes, there was damage, but it was also wasn't an episode in which it took months or whatever for for things to be back in operation. So and, and there was also, yeah, fortunately, only minimal injuries and so in itself, yes, it was a major incident. On the other hand, ultimately, it wasn't hugely disruptive. It, yeah, there were very few people involved. It didn't get a lot of attention or press anywhere, and so it just kind of faded out. I was expecting that somehow there would be some conversations, at least, to process things, or to kind of reach out to us, or to ilko or to me, or to to say, hey, we're sorry you went through this and to do something with that, and also that didn't happen. And so from from a business emergency perspective, to me, this tale from a triage point of view, on the on the offshore side, everything went as it should, right and or maybe it didn't quite. I'm sure there was some improvisation here or there, but there is procedures to follow, and they work, and I had trust in them, and I still have trust in those because in those moments, the focus and and in those procedures, the focus is very clear. The focus is people, people, people, people, and then everything else. And so it makes it very clear what needs to happen, what has the priority, and nobody is busy with anything else. We later found out that at the explosion, there was a big box with life jackets that went straight away overboard, and so the notification that came in was actually to the postcard, and the emergency services was actually that there was people in the water because all these life jackets were floating around. So they went out expecting a lot worse than what they encountered.

And this they saw all these empty life vests floating in the water with no people in it. So initially they thought, oh goodness,

Maartje van Krieken: that must have been scary. Now, what

happened here, you know, where all the all the people? So fortunately, of course, everybody was by the time, already in the lifeboat. And I think, you know, you mentioned it a little bit in terms of the communication that the two things that really, you know, stood, you know, still are close to me from that pomeran, is that when I arrived on the on the platform, the the person in charge, we had like an introduction, talking about what we were going to do. And in the middle of our conversation, he was asking, Do you know where your master pointed? Your master point is where you should go in times of a true emergency. And I never had that before. I've worked offshore many, many situations. But in that conversation, he asked me, Do you know where you need to go? And I happen to know that because I just had my introductions. Yes, I'm on this side of the platform, so I need to go to through the corridor, follow the arrows. That's where my lifeboat is going to be. And that was sort of a reminder in my in my mind, that I had to remember that. And lo and behold, I needed that, the information. So as Maartje said, option. When these protocols are there to make sure everybody is safe, they are there and they work. It's sort of, you know, and we trained for that. It's sort of what happens on the other side, on the beach or on that it, fortunately, it doesn't happen that often. But there's also not that much training in in terms of these kind of things that happen. Yeah.

Maartje van Krieken: So offshore, it worked. Eelco also experienced lots of care for people, right? So on the ship, they immediately started to to make coffee, make sure, or make food and provide coffee and drinks and yeah, gave, gave people a place to be. There was improv, improvisation needed because they couldn't go to the platform. And exorbitant that the lifeboats worked. They were able to lower those. There was enough lifeboat capacity because they all went into just one. They only needed to take just one to get away that their systems to get people. Then how do these live boats on a boat, which is not the most ideal, but yeah, it worked. And then from the boat back to the platform. There was no doubt, improvisation, but there is so much training upon training and systems upon systems that that worked. And also, clearly people at the heliport knew what needed to happen. People went to the heliport to meet you all. Meet you all on the on the other side, there was quite a lot of things that didn't go right, and there might be, might have been, a lot of reasons right. So that I do know for a fact that that organization went through a major reorg reorganization a few months earlier. So I don't know if everything was updated and sharpened with that. I also know for a fact that people who are on shore part of these emergency structures do not get the same amount of practice and drills and repetition in actually deploying those unfortunately, there are not a lot of incidents. So it could have been lack of training and revision the Yeah, there was a system to notify people. And in emergencies, typically, people want to control the message. And I tend to agree with that. If you you don't want falsehoods or to go out there or incomplete information, and you don't want to alarm Yeah, go out with half a message when that's when that's actually more hurtful than figuring out first a little bit more. But at the same time, we also need to recognize that with in this era of mobile phones and everything else, you probably can't control that, and if you're too slow, like in this scenario, then there was several occasions in which we had communicated, and I had more update information than I got out of any of the channels. So there should have been at least some conversations say, okay, hey, Maartje, this is what we know, or we're working on it, or this is now what's going to happen, or we don't have more information either, but if you have questions, here is a number you can call, for instance, right? I would have totally appreciated that now it ended up kind of being ridiculous and a little awkward for everybody involved. So, yeah, don't negate that. There is other communication methods out there, and things travel fast. And the other thing which I think happened, and we talked about that this was ultimately a relatively small incident with not a lot of consequences, I think, by the time that it was daylight and the team on shore started to get into gear, it was clear that there was some relatively small injuries, but nothing else, and that the fire was effectively already out. And so I don't think the team on shore felt the same urgency that it was about people, but they forgot about us. They forgot about all these partners and those of us who were not there, right? So they were all in good hands, but there was a whole group of people who'd received that call at 130 in the morning and then didn't receive the care and attention that I think they deserved in the aftermath of that, because that was not what the system was geared towards. And and I think it's important to remember that, and important to to think wide when you're in an emergency about who may all be affected, and extend that care to to those people, if you can, and in this situation, they could have, there was not an unsafe situation that needed attention more, right? Yes, there is business disruption implications, and there's legal implications, and there is the authorities and investigators to deal with, and there's, there's lots of other stuff. But ultimately. Uh, people should come first, and that includes those who are, you know, are next of kin. And so in this case, it's definitely a story with two sites. And fortunately, in the sites where it mattered the most, which is keeping people safe, it worked on the other side, where it's more about the emotional well being of others involved. It kind of failed, and it failed in the follow up too, yeah, and you did actually get more care in the days after you want to share the story. So,

so what happened was to put things in perspective. So I had to pick up my car a couple of days after the incident happened. So I got my spare key, and the company actually organized a driver to get me to the back to the heliport to pick up my car. So we're sitting over it's about an hour and a half drive from from from New Orleans, so we're talking away, and I've you know, I had to have it off my chest as well. So I wanted to share my story, and it's always easy to share with a stranger than than with people that that might have something to do with it. So I was talking about this, and I explained it to him, and then the driver explained to me what happened to him during Katrina, which obviously happened 2005 but 12 years before this that him and his family were he was still a young boy at the time, their house was about to be completely flooded, and they were about ready to get into The car, and then what happened was that his father, who was just about to start the car and drive away, got a heart attack and basically passed in the car. And he was a big man, so they couldn't move him out. He had to leave him there and leave the car with his dad in there, and then go to safety. So he was explaining me this story that they had to go back and had to identify his dad, which is a very, very sad story, and to me, that put things in perspective, but it also showed care for Hey, I have my story, and that's what happened to me, and to happen and to share it with with A Stranger in that point in time was for me, sobering, but also comforting, because you feel well, something bad happened to me, but I'm safe and yes, worse things can, can always happen so, but the sharing part was very comforting for me at that moment in time.

Maartje van Krieken: Yes. So in closing, if you have emergency procedures and set up, they need to be trained, they need to be drilled, they need to be repeated, they need to be refreshed and they need to be updated. There is no sense in having a protocol and then never using it, so that when it comes time to deploy, people are trying to stick to it so rigidly that it all falls apart, instead of maybe coming up with their own plan to do as best as they can. Right? I believe if in the onshore case, they hadn't tried to stick to a procedure where nobody exactly knew what to do and been tasked to just come up with a plan when they came up in the morning, they probably would have been a better they've done a better job because they're caring people, right? And they've been in this business, and so I think that would have worked better if you have emergency procedures. They need practices. They need use they need you need to keep them alive do order to be effective. And there will still be stuff that you need to improvise on. But that will happen, and that will happen when there's clarity and focus on what the priority is, which was people, people's safety in the Yeah. So then somebody should have said that. Then the second, the second priority should be care for people in general who were affected by this. And I think it was something else in the moment. Then it's important to realize that you can't you. You cannot control all the communication. You really cannot. And instead of trying to you might want to stay ahead of things and saying that you don't know yet, or that you want to get your message right so that, and then give people a timeline by when you hope to get back to them, or give them a number that they can reach out, or give them a focal point, even if you don't have information, providing clarity on how your communication will work is also an answer, and it's also clarity, and it's also helpful to people. And I think elko's final story that he just told often in business emergencies. So people are worried about legal implications, about PR implications, are they are worried about what individuals share. And yes, everything get these days, gets recorded and stuff, and there might be a tidbit of information in what somebody shares, that's the juicy detail that out of context can create problems, but in reality, the story that people want to share is how they felt in the moment, typically, when people want to share, or need to share, what happened to them in a in an emergency situation. It's not about the greater good. It's about I felt scared, or it was very overwhelming, or it's more about how it felt and the experience, and that it's art, and that people should be able to share that. So I think we should also all be less scared about that, because typically what people want to share in this moment is not the stuff that you would try to, that you would like to try and control as a business, yeah, because then it's gossip, and then you've moved on, if you're if you get to the more gossip state, your hours beyond or past the incident, right? And yes, once people are safe and have been able to take a breath and calm down, you can communicate that there's restrictions on what can be shared and where it can be shared, right? I don't believe that when the pulse is still high and the emotions are running high, that's the first message that maybe should come out. So, yeah, definitely lessons to be learned. Fortunately, it was an incident with limited consequences, but nevertheless, a good story, maybe one day and or today, and yeah, plenty of lessons in there. Thank you for tuning in. I'm glad you all got to meet my fabulous husband, and I'd love to see you here next week. Bye, pleasure. Bye, bye.