LOS ANGELES: A deadly chemical incident at a paper manufacturing plant in the northwestern United States is expected to claim at least 11 lives after officials confirmed that rescue operations had shifted to recovery efforts.
The accident occurred on Tuesday at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company plant in Longview, Washington, when a massive storage tank holding a highly caustic chemical substance ruptured during an early morning shift change.
Authorities confirmed that two people were killed in the incident, while nine others remain missing and are feared dead. Nine additional workers were injured.
Scott Goldstein of Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue said efforts to locate survivors had been suspended. “We have declared this incident a transition from rescue to recovery,” he told reporters.
According to officials, the damaged tank contained around 900,000 gallons of “white liquor,” a highly alkaline chemical solution used in paper production to break down wood chips into pulp.
The rupture caused extensive damage to nearby buildings, vehicles and industrial equipment at the site. Emergency crews and specialist firefighters continued operations to secure the area and assess the stability of the partially collapsed tank.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson described the disaster as potentially “the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history.”
Nippon Dynawave Packaging, a subsidiary of Japan’s Nippon Paper Group, produces billions of single-use food containers annually for customers across North America and Asia.
The incident came days after another chemical emergency in California forced tens of thousands of residents to evacuate after a volatile chemical tank overheated near Disneyland.
