The bodies of six missing people have been recovered from the site of a chemical tank implosion and rupture in Washington state, officials said Thursday.
At the same time as the search, efforts were being made to dilute contaminated water.
The death toll in the implosion at a paper mill in Longview Tuesday is 11. The remains of three of have not yet been recovered by Thursday afternoon.
“Recovery efforts continue,” Longview Fire Chief Brad Hannig said at a news conference. “The priority is ensuring responder safety while treating every victim with the greatest dignity, care and respect.”
The recovered remains are decontaminated before being sent to the Cowlitz County Coroner’s Office for identification, Hannig said.
The tank imploded at the Nippon Dynawave plant is designed to hold 900,000 gallons of a hazardous chemical known as white liquor.
This is used in the paper-pulping process. It was about 60% full at the time, officials said.
The implosion occurred around 7:15 a.m. Tuesday as workers were in a shift change. The six newly recovered bodies were found in a workers’ area, Longview Fire Battalion Chief Matt Amos said Thursday.
“It was in an area they would congregate in the mornings, where they would assemble, find out their assignments,” he said.
The tank contained sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate, officials said.
Officials are now trying to dilute the high-pH water in ditches that was contaminated with the large amount of chemicals that spilled, officials said.
“A large amount of volume” of material, as well as water used by firefighters, flushed into a ditch across the street from the plant, said Brooks Stanfield, the federal on-scene coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency.
The ditch is on top of an aquifer and a well field from which Longview gets its drinking water, he said.
“Longview’s water is safe. There is no cause for concerns,” city Public Works Director Chris Collins said Thursday, adding officials were able to divert contaminated water away from a wellhead area.
The aquifers that supply the city’s drinking water are 200 feet underground, and the city’s water treatment plant is designed to automatically shut off to prevent contamination, the city said.
Officials said the Columbia River is safe for fishing and recreational activities.
The city of Longview has a population of around 37,000, Stanfield said.
The disaster is thought to be the deadliest industrial accident in modern state history, Gov. Bob Ferguson has said.
