Rescue teams in Washington state have recovered the bodies of all 11 workers killed when a massive chemical storage tank collapsed at a paper manufacturing plant earlier this week, officials announced Saturday.
The industrial accident occurred Tuesday at a Nippon Dynawave Packaging plant when a tank holding “white liquor” – a chemical mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide used in paper production – suddenly imploded. Initially, two deaths were confirmed at the scene.
Recovery operations continued throughout the week as emergency crews sifted through wreckage inside the facility and deployed drones to survey the surrounding area, according to deputy chief Kurt Stitch of Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue.
The failed tank held approximately 900,000 gallons of the chemical solution, and testing has confirmed that pollutants reached the nearby Columbia River, authorities reported. However, officials stated that no “negative health impacts” have been found in local air quality or Longview’s municipal water supply.
The Longview facility is owned by Nippon Dynawave Packaging, a subsidiary created in 2016 when Nippon Paper Industries – Japan’s second-largest paper company by revenue – purchased the plant from Seattle-based timber corporation Weyerhaeuser for $225 million.
