A second person who was injured when a large chemical tank ruptured at a Washington state paper mill has died, authorities said Wednesday, bringing the presumed death toll to 11, including nine workers still missing in one of the deadliest US workplace accidents in years. Authorities said there was no hope of finding more survivors, but crews resumed searching Wednesday for those who went missing following Tuesday's tank failure at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. in Longview, which also injured eight people, including a firefighter who was treated and released, the AP reports. "We have declared this incident a transition from rescue to recovery as of this morning," Cowlitz Fire Rescue Chief Scott Goldstein said at a Wednesday press conference.
- If the 11 deaths are confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the US in recent decades—alongside a series of blasts that killed 16 people at an explosives plant in Tennessee last fall; a fire and detonation that killed 14 people at a fertilizer plant in Texas in 2013; and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11 people in 2010.
- "We're bracing ourselves for this being the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history," Gov. Bob Ferguson said Wednesday.
Officials said the paper mill tank spilled more than 500,000 gallons of "white liquor," a highly destructive chemical mixture used in paper manufacturing. After delaying the search over concerns that the tank might collapse further and spill more liquid, crews determined that it contained less than initially thought and that the tank was stable enough to resume efforts to find the missing. "We do not know where all nine are," said Goldstein. The rupture caused the huge circular tank to buckle on one side, and officials said late Tuesday that they would only work during daylight because of the dangers.
- Authorities said the rupture hasn't affected the safety of the air and drinking water in Longview, a Columbia River city of about 40,000 people with long ties to the Washington and Oregon paper and lumber industries. But they did say some of the contamination reached the river and that testing was ongoing. They also warned residents to keep away from ditches and dikes.
- The paper mill tank could hold about 900,000 gallons and was more than half full when it ruptured, Goldstein said. White liquor, which is made mostly of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide, is used with heat to break down wood to make kraft paper, a durable material used in packaging, shopping bags, and other products. The cause of the rupture remained unclear.
- Longview Fire Battalion Chief Matt Amos said recovery efforts will "continue to be slow, methodical, and deliberate," KOMO News reports. "The priority is ensuring responder safety while treating every victim with the greatest dignity, care and respect as possible." Amos said seven injured workers remained hospitalized.
- Authorities haven't released the names of the dead or missing, but some names have begun to trickle out. Todd Cornwell said his friend, Gilbert Bernal, was an electrician at the plant and was the first confirmed death. They knew each other through church and were in the same Bible study group, he said. "We actually had our group last night and instead of doing Bible study, we talked about him," Cornwell said. "He was always there willing to help in whatever needed to be done. When the local church school started flooding, he was one of the people there."
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