By Sheuwen Chuang, Taipei Medical University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
I was fortunate to have known Dr. Richard Cook, when I first participated in the Resilience Health Care Net (RHCN) meeting in Demark 2012. After Richard passed away on August 31, 2022, whenever I think of Richard’s care and help for me, there is always an urge in my heart to write down his love and contributions to the world, specifically to Taiwan.
Richard visited Taipei Medical University in January 2016 after the Formosa Fun Coast Dust Explosion (FFCDE) occurred on June 27, 2015, in New Taipei City, Taiwan. A flammable cornstarch explosion caused injuries to 499 people. The 499 burn victims were transported to 36 hospitals. Despite the extreme patient surge and limited resources, the mortality rate was 3% (15 out of 499). Richard was very concerned about this event. When he visited the initial receiving hospitals for delivering talks, he always liked to ask the hospital’s staff how they responded to the event after giving a resilience talk to the hospital.
Because of his encouragement and advice, we initiated an investigation proposal to study how the initial receiving hospitals responded to the mass burn casualties beyond their surge capacity. It is the first research to explore disaster resilience from the resilience engineering perspective in Taiwan. He explained what questions should be asked in the incident investigation questionnaire, what I should conclude after the investigation, etc. He drew his ideas on the table paper during lunch, wrote a key measure as a safety index on a napkin after a talk, and listed the critical investigation questions to support my future interviews during a meeting (see figure 1, Richard Cook’s handwriting). I felt that he wanted to give away all the relevant knowledge about incident investigation and resilience to me during such a limited visiting stay and let me know more about how to do well in an incident investigation.
He introduced me to Prof. David Woods to expand the research scale after he returned. With Prof. Woods’ advice and support, the FFCDE’s resilience studies acquired incredible advancement and accomplishments. As a result, Taiwan collected and analyzed the hospitals’ staff and organizations’ detailed adaptations to varied situations aftermath. The findings contribute to the potential improvements of Taiwan’s emergency medical services system for large-scale mass causalities. Other disasters in Taiwan are greatly missed in this part.
Besides his support for the FFCDE project, Richard had a secret donation to support the recovery from the southern Taiwan earthquake, which caused widespread damage and 116 deaths in February 2016, just a few days after he left Taiwan. Because of Richard Cook’s generosity and justice, he made the world a more human and brighter place. In honor of Dr. Richard Cook, the Taipei Medical University resilience research team wrote this letter to express our appreciation for his love and contribution to Taiwan.
