A man has been crushed to death by a wind farm turbine blade just weeks after unions raised safety concerns with the project managers.
The 36-year-old subcontractor was working at Golden Plains Wind Farm in Rokewood, west of Melbourne, when he was crushed by the rotor blade on Monday morning, Victoria Police said.
Emergency services tried to revive the man but he died at the scene.
Danny Nielsen, the Australian head of Vestas, the Danish wind energy company delivering the project, said the incident happened while the blade was on the ground being prepared to be lifted.
“Vestas is devastated for the worker, his family and the entire team building the wind farm and we will be doing everything we can to support them during this terrible time,” Mr Nielsen told reporters at the scene on Monday.
The Golden Plains Wind Farm is owned by TagEnergy and Ingka Group and has been under construction since early 2023.
The rotor blades used in the project are roughly more than 80 metres in length, according to the project’s website.
“With workplace safety as our number one priority, the site has been closed and we are working closely with the authorities,” Mr Nielsen said.
But three unions – the Australian Workers Union, CFMEU and Electrical Trades Union – had warned Vestas of safety concerns in the weeks leading up to the event, AWU state secretary Ronnie Hayden said.
“This devastating loss could have been prevented,” Mr Hayden said.
“Just two weeks ago, union delegates from three different unions met with Vestas management to raise serious safety concerns, telling them it was only dumb luck that nobody had been killed on site yet.”
The AWU accused Vestas of transferring safety obligations onto subcontractors who lacked the necessary training.
“How many more families need to lose their loved ones before WorkSafe and the Victorian government take real action?” Mr Hayden said.
“We’re sick of hollow investigations and paperwork while workers are killed.”
CFMEU National Secretary Zach Smith said his union had made multiple written and verbal safety reports on Vestas to the Victorian safety regulator, WorkSafe.
“Large multinationals with terrible international safety records need to know that they can’t bring those practices to Australia.
“When they are operating in this country, we will hold them to account and fight tooth and nail to defend our hard-won workplace safety standards,” Mr Smith said.
Mr Nielsen said Vestas spoke to unions every week, but would not confirm discussions of safety with the unions
Speaking at a press conference in Melbourne, Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan expressed her sympathies and noted the state had strong workplace safety regulations.
“Any accident in any workplace is indeed a deep concern and a tragedy,” she said.
On completion, the project will be the biggest wind farm in the southern hemisphere, producing more than 4000 gigawatt hours of energy each year – about nine per cent of the state’s current energy demand.
The project’s first turbines were connected to the grid in October at a launch by state Energy Minster Lily D’Ambrosio.
The wind farm has planning approval for up to 228 turbines, with the current design comprising 215 turbines across 16,739 hectares.
WorkSafe has launched an investigation that could take more than a year to complete and police will prepare a coroner’s report.
The incident came after another wind farm worker was killed in April after falling 20m from a wind monitoring tower at a site in Queensland.
