At least one person was killed and nine remain missing after a tank of white liquor—a chemical mixture used in the industrial papermaking process—ruptured at a facility in Washington in an incident first responders are now saying is creating “hazardous conditions” for rescuers.
A tank of white liquor imploded at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company in southern Washington state on Tuesday.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
The chemical tank rupture occurred at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company—a kraft pulp and paper mill and liquid packaging plant that employs hundreds of workers, according to Washington’s Department of Ecology.
At least 10 people were hospitalized after the rupture on Tuesday morning, the Longview Fire Department said in an update on Tuesday evening—which includes the employee who died and one firefighter who has since been released.
At least nine more employees were still unaccounted for, officials said.
First responders initially thought the ruptured tank held 80,000 gallons of white liquor, but officials now say it was actually 900,000 gallons of the chemical mixture—and 90,000 gallons may remain inside the ruptured tank.
The tank is still “unstable,” Longview Fire Department officials said, and first responders are working to “structurally reinforce and stabilize” the tank before recovery operations can resume.
Recovery operations will pause overnight, the fire department said.
There is no immediate threat to the public, the fire department said, but it warned residents to avoid the facility as recovery efforts remain ongoing.
White liquor is a dangerous chemical mixture used in the industrial production of paper. It’s a mixture primarily made from sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate. White liquor is used in the kraft process—the industrial process for converting wood into pulp. The mixture is used to treat wood chips, which are then cooked under high pressure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s unclear what caused the rupture at the Nippon Dynawave facility, and firefighters are currently focused on rescue operations. Authorities also stressed the chemical leak was not a threat to the greater community. The industrial sites “have great safety protocols,” according to Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue Chief Scott Goldstein, a local Cowlitz County rural fire district whose department partners to respond to the industrial area by the Columbia River.
The implosion in Washington comes only days after an overheated chemical tank at an aerospace facility in Orange County, California, forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate. The tank, containing the toxic chemical methyl methacrylate used to make plastics and acrylic paints, threatened to explode as its internal temperature rapidly rose to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. A crack in the tank eventually relieved pressure and has likely averted a major explosion. However, as of Tuesday, about 16,000 people were still under evacuation orders, the Associated Press reported.
此内容由惯性聚合(RSS阅读器)自动聚合整理，仅供阅读参考。 原文来自 — 版权归原作者所有。