11 presumed dead in Washington state paper mill implosion as rescue shifts to recovery

No survivors are expected to be found at a Washington state manufacturing plant after a chemical tank implosion, according to officials, who on Wednesday said that a second death had been confirmed and that nine others are presumed dead.

The 11 likely deaths in Tuesday’s implosion at the paper mill in Longview would make it the state’s deadliest industrial accident in modern history, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said.

“We have declared this incident a transition from rescue to recovery as of this morning,” Cowlitz County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said at a news conference Wednesday.

The implosion happened around 7:15 a.m. Tuesday at the Nippon Dynawave Plant and involved a tank built to hold 900,000 gallons of “white liquor,” a noxious chemical used in the paper-pulping process, officials said.

“We’re bracing ourselves for this being the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history. When you have a tragedy of that scale, the impacts on individuals, on families, and on communities is profound,” Ferguson said.

In addition to the nine people who have not been accounted for since the Tuesday morning accident, seven employees are hospitalized with injuries, officials said. One injured firefighter was treated and released.

“We have searched the area, the area that is searchable. We do not have the ability to state that we have located all nine, nor the ability to state where those nine were,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein said an employee shift change started about 15 minutes before the blast, “so there were many people in this area, which he said included an administrative workspace, a break room space and operational spaces.

The tank held a chemical brew — used to convert wood chips to pulp — made up of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate, officials said.

To bolster the search and rescue, 46 members of the Washington National Guard were deployed to the site. That included 10 civil support team members to assist the state’s Department of Ecology with air monitoring, Ferguson said. Thus far, there has been no evidence of airborne contamination, he said

Another 20 members of the Guard’s Homeland Response Force will help with decontamination, the governor said.

According to Washington’s State Dept of Ecology, Nippon Dynawave has about 550 employees total, with 450 working in its liquid packaging plant. (Source: NBC News)