The latest on the deadly implosion at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Plant

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]You're listening to SoundSide. I'm Libby Denkmann.

[00:00:03]>> 911, what's the address of your emergency?

[00:00:07]>> Uh the address is >> On Tuesday, an employee at the Nippon Dynawave packaging plant in Longview, Washington called 911 with an emergency.

[00:00:17]>> What's going on there?

[00:00:19]>> Um we have uh three people with chemical burns from white liquor and there's uh one person missing.

[00:00:29]>> One person missing?

[00:00:30]>> Yes.

[00:00:31]>> What happened there and what what went on?

[00:00:33]>> Um I was told a tank imploded.

[00:00:37]Yeah, we need rescue units, fire department, everyone.

[00:00:40]>> Yep, we've got lots of people headed that way. As many as 11 people are now believed to be dead from that chemical tank implosion at the pulp and paper mill. Officials confirmed yesterday that the Columbia River is contaminated due to the disaster. Washington's governor is calling this the deadliest industrial tragedy in the state's modern history.

[00:00:59]For an update on the latest, Eric Newman is here. He is the Southwest Washington Bureau Chief for Oregon Public Broadcasting and he has been following this story all week. Eric, thank you very much for being here.

[00:01:10]>> Yeah, good to talk.

[00:01:12]>> What happened? If you can just give us the unfolding of events at the paper mill on Tuesday morning.

[00:01:20]>> Sure. So um so this is at a pulp and paper mill in Longview, like you said.

[00:01:26]Um the accident happened in the morning, I think around 7:00 a.m. um during a shift change with workers there.

[00:01:35]Basically, there's a a really large tank of caustic chemicals that's known as white liquor, which is this chemical that's used to break down the fibers uh for paper products. And there was some kind of a accident. They're still sort of trying to figure out exactly what happened, but they've been referring to it as a blast um that caused this large tank that held could hold 900,000 gallons of this chemical to fail um and again, they're still sort of trying to figure out exactly what happened, but there are nine people who are unaccounted for is sort of the official description of those individuals now.

[00:02:15]They're presumed dead um and like you said, there's two others that are uh confirmed dead as of this time.

[00:02:21]>> So, investigations are still ongoing, but it does sound like this wasn't just a situation where the tank itself had a structural problem and failed. There was an actual explosion or blast of some kind. Do we know, Eric, if there was any indication of danger ahead of time?

[00:02:40]>> I haven't heard any details about that.

[00:02:42]I think people are being really cautious in terms of talking about any sort of cause or factors or anything like that.

[00:02:48]I've talked to union officials in uh the Longview area who have talked about how uh this company, Nippon Dynawave, has a pretty good track record in terms of safety.

[00:03:00]Um some of my coworkers have looked into, you know, past violations from labor and industries and agencies like that and as with any big industrial company, there's there's little violations here or there, but nothing that seems specifically related to a big disaster like this. So, um nobody has really said anything about what may have caused this at this point. There's uh an investigation that's happening right now. Um there's a federal agency called the US Chemical Safety Board that opened an investigation into the accident yes- yesterday. There's a pretty emotional statement from one of the higher-ups at Nippon Dynawave who said they were going to completely cooperate with the investigation and that's really kind of the extent of the information that we have right now.

[00:03:48]>> So, two people are confirmed dead at this hour. OPB has reported that there have been some safety concerns with the rescue and and recovery efforts that have slowed things down a little bit.

[00:04:02]What do we know about the nine missing workers and the effort to find them at this point?

[00:04:09]>> So, um basically they talked about how uh the efforts from emergency responders transitioned from rescue to recovery uh on Wednesday and basically that kind of is the confirmation that these people are presumed to be dead. I don't live in Longview, so I think community members probably have a lot more information in terms of who the actual deceased are.

[00:04:32]There there is a sort of a family meeting center in Longview with the pulp and paper union that family members and community members are allowed to go to.

[00:04:41]That's pretty closed off for media right now.

[00:04:44]There have been miscellaneous GoFundMe pages that have been popping up, but um my understanding is that um the identities of the people that are deceased are not going to be made publicly available until their remains are recovered.

[00:04:58]So, that information has been pretty unavailable for the most part.

[00:05:02]>> So, yesterday it was confirmed that the Columbia River did see contamination because of this tank rupture.

[00:05:09]What is known about the scale of that contamination so far or what is actually contaminating the river?

[00:05:16]>> So, um the they've said that there was so they had the this tank that held uh these chemicals. They've identified that there was about 500,000 gallons of this chemical that left the tank. I think people are being pretty cagey right now in terms of exactly where that chemical is. It could have gone into the Columbia River. They did confirm that there were elevated pH levels in the river, but the exact extent of how much of that chemical may have gone into the river is not yet known. The Coast Guard has been down at the incident site as well as the EPA and the Washington State Department of Ecology and they have not said that there's any specific warnings or risks to people in the Columbia River. In terms of waterways, the bigger concerns have been these sort of dikes and ditches that are nearby the paper mill that in some cases go right up to neighborhoods. So, imagine like really big drainage ditches that are full of water and there have been fish in some of those drainage ditches that have died appear to have died because of this chemical. There've also been concerns about drinking water in Longview. Those agencies that I mentioned have been working with the city to flush out contaminated water from the city.

[00:06:39]Beyond the ditches, I don't believe there are any current warnings, but that's kind of the the water-related work that's been happening. I think we're going to have to wait to know the extent of the Columbia River which runs right alongside the paper mill, but I think one of the reasons they're being sort of cagey about where this chemical went is it may still be on the site of the paper mill or probably some amount of it is and could be contained with cleanup efforts there. So, they're still trying to figure out where exactly these chemicals went.

[00:07:10]>> In our final couple of minutes here, Eric, can you just talk to me about what you and your colleagues at OPB will be following going forward? I mean, I've mentioned that the governor called this the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern state history for Washington State. As many as 11 people dead.

[00:07:31]We don't know the extent of again contamination and what these cleanup efforts might look like going forward.

[00:07:38]What will you be following >> I think the impact on this community is a really big story. Longview is a relatively small town. The Longview-Kelso area is like 100,000 people. Um so it's going to have a huge impact on that community. The paper mill is a long-standing employer in the area.

[00:07:57]So having 11 people from one company die is going to just have a huge impact on that town.

[00:08:04]We'll also be following the environmental impact of this kind of a tragedy. Some of my co-workers at OPB are looking into this just sort of how common these kind of issues are at paper mills because obviously paper mills are in all sorts of areas of Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. So those are just a few of the threads that we know of right now, but I mean there's people have talked about how this kind of an investigation from L&I could take months to really find out the specific cause of this accident. So I think this will probably be a a pretty long story.

[00:08:40]>> Eric Newman is the Southwest Washington Bureau Chief for Oregon Public Broadcasting and he has been covering along with his colleagues the implosion at the pulp and paper mill in Longview, Washington. Thank you so much Eric for being here.

[00:08:54]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:08:55]>> And thanks to KUOW's John Ryan for the 911 audio from the scene that you heard in the lead. Thanks for listening to Sound Side. Don't forget you can listen live on KUOW 94.9 FM Seattle at noon and 8:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday or anytime online at kuow.org or on your favorite podcast app.