Bodies of 7 of the 9 missing employees recovered following chemical tank rupture at paper mill

The body of a seventh employee who was missing after a chemical tank ruptured at a paper mill in Washington state has been recovered, officials said Friday, bringing the confirmed death toll to nine.

Two of the missing employees have not yet been recovered, according to Longview Fire Chief Brad Hannig.

Recovery efforts are ongoing in what Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson warned could be the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington state history.

Fire authorities said the "hazardous materials incident" was reported Tuesday morning at Nippon Dynawave Packaging, a pulp and paper mill in Longview, a city of 38,000 people about 50 miles northwest of Portland.

A tank containing white liquor, a chemical mixture used in the paper-making process, ruptured in what authorities have described as a blast that damaged much of the facility.

Immediately after the rupture, two employees were transported to area hospitals, where they subsequently died, authorities said.

The bodies of six of the recovered employees were found in a workers' area, according to Longview Fire Battalion Chief Matt Amos. The incident occurred at a shift change, and the employees would often congregate in that area during that time, he said.

The body of the seventh employee was found once crews were able to move further into the scene, Amos said Friday, calling the recovery effort "slow and methodical."

"There's still a lot of industrial hazards," he said during a press briefing. "We're working very slowly and to keep everything safe and preserve as much as we can for future investigations."

The Cowlitz County Coroner's Office will release the names of the deceased "when all individuals have been recovered and family notifications are complete," officials said Wednesday.

When the tank ruptured, there was a "rapid outflowing of the material from the tank that blew out several walls" in shops in that area and damaged equipment, Brian Wood, director of support services for Nippon Dynawave Packaging, said during Friday's briefing.

The cause of the rupture remains under investigation, he said.

"Our focus remains consistent with the unified incident command on the recovery of our employees," Wood said. "We are cooperating fully with the agencies that have the responsibility to the public to do that analysis."

"We're doing everything we can to be responsive to their requests to the needs of the first responders that are going into that area and need to move equipment, but also preserving as much of that evidence as we possibly can for the future," he added.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said Wednesday it is opening an investigation into the incident "to determine how it happened and what can be done to prevent something like this from happening again."

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries said it is also investigating.

The pulp mill was shut down following the incident, with minimum staffing operating critical infrastructure at the moment, including the effluent treatment system, according to Wood.

When asked about safety concerns over the plant during a press briefing Thursday, Wood responded, "We work in a highly hazardous atmosphere and a highly hazardous industry. We approach it with the utmost care in everything that we do. I'll let the facts speak for themselves."

White liquor is a chemical mixture of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate used in the paper-making process, authorities said.

The Nippon facility is located on the Washington-Oregon border near the Columbia River. Contamination was confirmed to have entered the river, authorities said Wednesday, with mitigation efforts ongoing.

Officials continued to stress that the city's water is safe.

"We were successfully able to divert all of the contaminated water away from our wellhead protection area," Chris Collins, the public works director and the assistant city manager for the city of Longview, said Thursday.

He noted that the wells are drawn from aquifer that is approximately 200 feet deep and are therefore "very protected from any sort of surface environmental concerns."