A catastrophic failure of a chemical tank at Nippon Dynawave Packaging, which killed 11 workers, exposed a vulnerability that experts say aboveground tanks do not need to be inspected.
LONGVIEW, Wash. — The massive chemical storage tank that imploded last week at Japan’s Dynawave packaging plant, killing 11 workers and becoming the deadliest industrial accident in modern Washington state history, was never routinely inspected by state or federal safety regulators — and experts say there was no need for such an inspection.
The tank’s catastrophic failure exposed a major gap in workplace safety oversight: Above-ground tanks that hold industrial chemicals like white liquor are not required to undergo regular inspections by state or federal agencies.
“Because this is on the ground, because this is liquor, it really falls into a more heavily regulated gray space,” said Dr. Marissa Baker, associate professor of occupational health sciences at the University of Washington and director of the UW Northwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety. “They don’t have the kind of enhanced process safety management regulations. They don’t have an ecology department. The local fire department in the county will know what chemicals are being used on site, but no one is going to actually come up and knock on their door and say, ‘Let me see your tanks.'”
Baker, who is also a member of the EPA’s Chemical Scientific Advisory Committee, noted that underground storage tanks and those storing oil and gas products do face regular state and federal inspections, but above-ground industrial storage tanks at facilities like Nippon Dynawave do not meet the same requirements.
This means that the responsibility for maintaining and inspecting the tanks rests solely with the company.
At 7:15 a.m. on May 26, the tank ruptured containing white liquor, a highly corrosive chemical mixture of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and sodium carbonate used to break down wood chips into pulp during the papermaking process. Workers were gathered near the tank, which ruptured during a shift change.
More than 500,000 gallons of corrosive liquid flooded the factory floor and surrounding drainage systems. Seven other employees suffered burns and inhalation injuries, and one firefighter was injured while responding to the scene. Some of the most seriously injured were taken to the old Oregon Burn Center in Portland.
Dr. Baker said the Longview accident was likely avoidable.
“When you see a large industrial accident or disaster like this, you really have to think it’s going to be a system-level failure. It’s not necessarily one person or one thing that went wrong. It’s going to be due to a lot of different factors. So it could be that the facility wasn’t maintained well,” she said.
