Posted on 06/11/2026 1:27:01 PM PDT by zeestephen
LONGVIEW, Wash. — The Cowlitz County Coroner's Office has completed autopsies on 10 of the 11 people who died in the May 26 industrial accident at the Nippon Dynawave facility in Longview, one of the deadliest workplace disasters in the nation in recent decades...The disaster began when a tank containing more than 500,000 gallons of a highly destructive chemical mixture used in paper manufacturing collapsed at the facility...According to autopsy findings released by the coroners office, 10 of the victims died from alkaline chemical burns...
(Excerpt) Read more at komonews.com ...
It located next to the Columbia River.
Are they incompetent or just being ignored?
Likely was sodium hydroxide.
NaOH
Caustic Soda
Lye
“The disaster began when a tank containing more than 500,000 gallons of a highly destructive chemical mixture used in paper manufacturing collapsed at the facility...According to autopsy findings released by the coroners office, 10 of the victims died from alkaline chemical burns...” Somebody messed up.
I do not completely understand what that means.
The photos are not really helpful, either.
The area was so toxic it took them several days to find all the victims.
Dying from the highly caustic “white liquor” used in paper mills is a horrible way to die.
PH 14.
I wonder if there was enough remains for positive ID...
Procedures were either not laid out or, more likely, they were ignored.
It is not just this, there have been a series of safety failures that should have been easily prevented if people had been doing their job.
Something is badly wrong.
Yuck.
I’ve been trying to figure out how the tank imploded and can only surmise that they draining the tank ( pumping the contents out) at a high rate of discharge and the vent on top somehow closed creating such a vacuum as to cause the sides to collapse inward and splitting the tank open. The sudden release of vacuum pressure them caused the material to backflush and spray outward.
Just a WAG.
Somebody’s getting sued.
Your hypothesis makes perfect sense to me. I can’t imagine how else a tank full of liquid could implode.
Sounds very nasty... Nobody deserves such a horrendous ending.
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