On Tuesday, May 26, a chemical accident and implosion at the Nippon Dynawave paper mill in Longview, Washington, took the lives of 11 workers, members of Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) Local 580. Six other workers and a firefighter were injured. Washington Governor Bob Ferguson called it the “deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington history.” State and federal agencies are investigating to determine the cause.

First opened in 1953 by Weyerhaeuser, the mill turns wood chips into paper for milk cartons and food containers. In the multi-step Kraft process of pulpmaking, heat and alkaline chemical solutions “cook” wood chips down into pulp that later becomes paper cups and single-serve food containers.

The accident happened around 7:15 a.m. May 26 as mill workers were performing a handoff between the night shift and day shift.

Mike Bridges, president of the Longview/Kelso Building and Construction Trades Council, said he learned from talking with workers and first responders that most of the victims were in the E&I (electrical and instrumentation) shop.

“That was where they started their day and got ready to tool up to go out into the field and do what they needed to do,” Bridges said.

A few hundred feet from their shop stood a 900,000-gallon metal container filled with a chemical solution called “white liquor,” a highly corrosive liquid made of mostly sodium hydroxide (lye) and sodium sulfide. White liquor registers at 14 pH, the most extreme alkaline end of the scale. Its power to liquify solid matter like wood chips makes it dangerous to the human body.

“Those chemicals are extremely dangerous to the worker and the public,” says Mike Silvery, a former AWPPW Local 580 president who worked at the mill for 40 years. Silvery says when he first started at the mill working on a nearby tank, he came home with caustic burns all the time.

“It was a metal tank with a plastic tank inside of it, because the stuff is so corrosive that it would eat at the metal tank, so it had to have kind of a tank within a tank,” Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Central Labor Council president Terry Carlson told the Labor Press.

The tank appears to have crumpled like a giant soda can, tearing a hole in the plastic and metal lining and spilling white liquor into the surrounding area. 

It’s not yet clear what caused the accident. The Cowlitz County Coroner’s Office has not yet released details about how workers were killed.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and Washington State Labor & Industries (L&I) are investigating. L&I spokesperson Matt Ross said his agency is assigning specialized investigators who focus on high-hazard chemical industries. 

“These investigations can take up to 180 days, by law, and for large, complex inspections like this one, we’re likely to use that time,” Ross said.

AWPPW spokesperson Josh Estes said while the agency investigations are under way, Nippon Dynawave is conducting its own investigation to assess the damage and create a plan for the future, including the possibility of running parts of the facility independent of the damaged tank.

The Washington State Department of Ecology confirmed some white liquor made its way into surrounding ditches and killed 2,200 fish, but affected water that reached the nearby Columbia River has been diluted to safe pH levels and poses no danger to the drinking water supply.

The plant is shut down for now, with only a few workers on the job to ensure equipment remains viable and unharmed by inactivity.

That means roughly 1,000 workers are off the job, though the company is paying them through at least June 7.

Families, friends, and community members are grieving the sudden and shocking losses of the 11 workers killed:

• Gilbert Bernal of Kelso, a 52-year-old electrician who worked at the company for 15 years, leaves behind a son, a daughter, and a grandchild.
• Jared Ammons of Longview, 35, expected to join his wife that afternoon to see the first ultrasounds of their third child.
• Tyler Covington of Castle Rock, 29, had a fiancée and three young children.
• Brad Covington of Castle Rock, 27, was Tyler’s younger brother and an electrical and instrumentation technician at Nippon since 2021.
• Braydon Finkas of Cathlamet, 38, had been an electrician at Nippon since 2016.
• John Forsberg of Longview, 51
• Clint “CJ” Doran of Kelso, 26
• Norman Barlow of Vancouver, 58
• Robb Wilson of Clatskanie, 48
• Dillon Miller, who had a wife and three children, died in a Portland hospital.
• Dale Miller of Portland, 54, was a journeyman millwright and had worked at Nippon since December.

Longview community members wasted no time in organizing resources for the families. The morning after the accident, Building Trades Council president Bridges and Central Labor Council president Carlson helped start a fund for the victims’ loved ones at the Lower Columbia Longshoremen’s Federal Credit Union.

“We want to raise enough money to make sure these people can lay their loved ones to rest,” Carlson told the Labor Press. “Many of these members were so young. I really don’t think planning and paying for funerals was on their radar, because to them they had tons of life left in front of them.”

“We had people calling and lining up at the door to put money in before we were even ready,” Bridges said.

On Saturday, May 30, Bob’s Sporting Goods held a fundraiser in its parking lot, with vendors coordinated by Adam and Rose Scattergood, who host the annual barbecue festival Big Smoke in Little Kalama. The event was packed with thousands of supporters.

If Washington L&I assesses fines for Nippon Dynawave, the victims’ families will not directly benefit. That money will go into the workers’ compensation supplemental pension fund.

HOW TO HELP   The Cowlitz Wahkiakum Central Labor Council and the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers (AWPPW) are collecting donations to help the families. Donations can be made online via Venmo at @cwclcfamilysupport or in person at Lower Columbia Longshoremen’s Federal Credit Union at 629 14th Avenue, Longview, Washington, as well as at Mint Valley Credit Union, PUD Credit Union, Red Canoe Credit Union, and Fibre FCU. 

6 

That’s how many times the first and second Trump administrations have proposed to eliminate the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the federal agency that’s investigating the fatal accident at Longview’s Nippon Dynawave paper mill. In its annual federal budget proposals, the Trump administration has proposed to eliminate the agency’s $14 million annual budget, saying its work duplicates the work of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Congress so far has disregarded that proposal and funded the agency anyway.