One Dead, Nine Missing After Chemical Tank Implodes at Washington Paper Mill

A massive storage tank filled with corrosive industrial chemicals imploded at a paper mill in Longview, Washington, on Tuesday, killing at least one worker and leaving nine others unaccounted for in what officials described as a catastrophic structural failure. Nine more people were hurt, with injuries ranging from minor to critical, including chemical burns and inhalation injuries; one firefighter was among the wounded.

The tank, at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. facility, held what is known in papermaking as "white liquor" — a caustic mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide used to break down wood chips into pulp. The chemical is highly corrosive, and the sheer volume involved turned the collapse into both a rescue emergency and a hazardous-materials incident.

Initial estimates put the tank's contents at roughly 80,000 gallons, but officials later revised that figure dramatically upward to approximately 900,000 gallons. Around 90,000 gallons were believed to remain inside the damaged and unstable structure, complicating the response as crews worked to keep the remaining vessel from giving way.

By Tuesday evening, the operation had grim overtones. "At the moment we are not aware of any rescues that are yet to be made," said Cowlitz Fire and Rescue Chief Scott Goldstein, signaling that responders had largely transitioned from searching for survivors to recovering victims. Authorities said there was no direct threat to the surrounding community, and the cause of the failure remained under investigation.

Longview, a city of about 38,000 on the Columbia River roughly 50 miles north of Portland, Oregon, has long been a hub of the Pacific Northwest's timber and paper industries, and the mill is among the area's significant employers. Industrial sites that handle large volumes of pulping chemicals are subject to federal and state safety rules, and investigators are expected to scrutinize the age and integrity of the tank, maintenance records, and any warning signs that may have preceded the collapse.

The disaster ranks among the deadliest industrial accidents in the state in recent memory, and local hospitals braced for the possibility of additional casualties as recovery teams picked through the wreckage. Company officials and state labor regulators did not immediately detail what protective measures had been in place for workers near the tank at the time it gave way.

Washington's Department of Labor & Industries, which enforces workplace safety across the state, is among the agencies expected to examine the failure. White liquor is a routine fixture of kraft pulping, the dominant process used to make paper, and mills store it in enormous quantities; the volume that escaped at Longview underscored how a single equipment failure at such a plant can imperil an entire crew in a matter of seconds. Investigators are likely to focus on the tank's age, inspection history and whether corrosion or overpressure played a role.