Presumed death toll rises to 11 after Washington state paper mill tank rupture

By Claire Rush
Associated Press in WBAL TV
May 27, 2026
Category: Health & Safety
Region: US West

LONGVIEW, Wash. —Crews resumed the grim search Wednesday for nine people presumed killed at a Washington state paper mill where a chemical tank ruptured a day earlier in one of the deadliest U.S. workplace accidents in years. The likely death toll rose to 11, including the missing, after another person who was injured died, authorities said Wednesday. Authorities said there was no hope of finding more survivors following Tuesday’s tank failure at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. in Longview, which also injured another eight people, including a firefighter who was treated and released by a hospital. If the 11 deaths are confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest industrial accidents in the U.S. in recent decades — alongside a series of blasts that killed 16 people at an explosives plant in Tennessee last fall… Officials said Wednesday that the paper mill tank spilled more than 500,000 gallons of “white liquor,” a highly destructive chemical mixture used in paper manufacturing.

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