Death toll rises to nine after Washington state paper mill chemical tank rupture

Crews in Longview, Washington, have recovered another victim from the site of a major paper mill disaster, raising the confirmed death toll to nine. Two workers remain unaccounted for after the rupture at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company plant on Tuesday morning. The incident happened at a facility along the Columbia River and involved a tank holding more than 500,000 gallons of a chemical mixture used in paper production.

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Officials said the tank collapse released a flood of caustic liquid known as white liquor, which can cause severe burns on contact and lung damage if inhaled as vapour. The force of the release was strong enough to overturn pickup trucks and damage buildings at the site. Recovery work has been slow and methodical because of the hazards left behind, according to Longview fire battalion chief Matt Amos.

Crews have been avoiding the area closest to the tank while engineers assess which damaged buildings are safe to enter. The latest recovery means 11 workers are now presumed killed in the disaster, although authorities have not yet released the names of those who died. Families and friends have begun identifying some of the victims publicly and setting up online fundraisers, but formal identification remains under way.

The remains recovered by search teams must be decontaminated before being handed to the coroner's office, and the crews themselves also have to go through decontamination procedures. The scale of the operation underlines the continuing danger at the site and the difficulty of confirming the full toll. The disaster is being treated as one of the deadliest workplace accidents in the United States in recent decades.

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It also highlights the risks associated with large-scale industrial chemical systems, especially when a failure affects both workers and the surrounding plant infrastructure. The investigation into the cause is continuing, and the confirmed death toll has already made this a major industrial safety case with implications for the company, local responders and regulators. The presence of hazardous chemicals has also slowed the recovery process and complicated the search for the missing workers.

The plant sits in Longview, a city on the Columbia River in Washington state, and the incident has drawn attention because of the size of the tank involved and the severity of the release. Among those presumed dead were two brothers who worked at the plant together, as well as an electrician whose friend described him as someone who helped neighbours with farm work. Those personal details have emerged through relatives and friends rather than through official identification, reflecting the early stage of the recovery process.

The disaster has therefore become both an emergency response operation and a prolonged effort to account for everyone who was inside the plant when the tank collapsed. What remains unclear is the exact cause of the tank rupture and when the final two missing workers may be found. Officials have not said when the site will be fully safe to enter, and the investigation is still at an early stage.

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