How a tank rupture disrupted life in a tight-knit Washington town that has lived with pulp mills for generations

CNN

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — It was not the typical morning banter at the bustling Pancake House in the mill town of Longview, Washington.

“We’ve actually just been sick to our stomach,” said Julie Oliver, 60, taking a moment from serving breakfast to speak on the phone. “We realize how many of the ones that are still missing are our customers, and very close family, and people that we’ve known for many years.”

The talk in Longview – an industrial and shipping hub along the Columbia River in southwestern Washington, roughly 50 miles north of Portland, Oregon – on Wednesday centered on the search for nine people presumed dead a day after a chemical tank rupture at a popular paper plant.

“My son works at that mill, and he got home (Tuesday) morning off of graveyard shift and was in bed by 10 after 6 and I was on my way to work at 7:15 and saw the (emergency) vehicles and I just had the selfish thing that I said, ‘I’m so thankful my son is at home.’”

Eleven people are believed to have died when a 900,000-gallon tank containing hazardous chemicals ruptured Tuesday morning at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. facility in Longview. Two victims have been recovered and another eight people were injured in the blast. About 25,000 gallons of caustic material remains inside the damaged tank, officials estimated Wednesday.

“This town has a big sense of community,” said Stephen Burright, who has lived in Longview for 19 years. “There is not one person in this town that doesn’t know someone that works at the mill.”

Among those killed was Gilbert Bernal, a beloved father and grandfather, his daughter Geovana Bernal-Ferguson told CNN on Wednesday. Bernal-Ferguson’s brother and mother confirmed through photos at a hospital on Tuesday that a deceased man there was Bernal, she said. The family is still waiting for official confirmation from the coroner.

“I really can’t picture our lives without him,” Bernal-Ferguson wrote in a social media post, sharing dozens of photo memories of her father. Her favorite memories included those involving her son and Bernal’s first grandson, Jameson, she told CNN.

“My heart is shattered knowing that their time was cut short but my son will always know how incredible his grandpa was,” Bernal-Ferguson wrote in the post. “He truly was a one of a kind.”

The ruptured tank contained a mixture called white liquor, which is used in paper-making processes and can cause severe burns when it comes into contact with skin. With the blast spilling an estimated 500,000 gallons of the substance, authorities methodically continue the “extremely hazardous” recovery efforts for the nine mill employees who are presumed dead.

“We have husbands of waitresses here that work there, maybe not right where that tank is. So we’re all just really sick and very somber today,” Oliver said Wednesday.

Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. employs about 1,000 people at its pulp-and-paper mill and packaging plant, according to Washington’s Department of Ecology. It has manufactured liquid packaging board in Longview since 1953, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. Each year, Nippon says, the site produces enough paperboard to make roughly 6 billion milk cartons.

“If you’re not in a trades family or a mill family, it can be hard to understand how devastating an industrial accident like this is for a mill town like Longview,” US Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, told reporters Wednesday, noting that paper mills in the state have been struggling to remain financially viable.

The rupture and its aftermath have left a pall of sadness over the city of about 40,000 people where generations have supported their families through shifts at the plants and married into other mill families, according to locals.

“The people who are responders here have friends and relatives that work on site,” Cowlitz County fire Chief Scott Goldstein said Tuesday.

Longview was established in the early 1920s by the Long-Bell Lumber Company to support the company’s large sawmills, according to the historical archives of the Longview Public Library.

The industrial area where the plant sits is vital to the local blue-collar economy.

“It has been this way for 100 years now and remains that way,” Goldstein said. “This is an amazing community of hard-working people, and a tragedy like this affects absolutely everybody. These are a tough people. These are a strong people.”

A spokesperson for the union representing plant employees, the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, would not comment on how long members will be out of work, saying the focus is on the recovery.

“This tragedy is impacting far more than just a facility or a workforce – it is impacting an entire community of families, friends, coworkers, and neighbors who have spent years and, in many cases, decades building their lives around this mill and around one another,” Josh Estes said in a statement.

Burright, 51, said he has five friends who work at the mill and were doing fine.

“There’s three other mills in a strip along the river,” he said. “We are one of the more important water ports in the area. You can’t bump into someone that doesn’t know someone else that you know. Everyone’s lived here for the majority of their lives. They don’t really move out of the town.”

Burright said locals have been checking up on one another on Facebook since Tuesday. “We need to make sure that as many people are as safe as they can be.”

At Wild Street Cycles in Longview, Richard Bargen, who runs the repair shop, said a bike night is planned for June 19, with proceeds going to the families affected by the tank rupture at the paper plant.

“We want to do whatever we can to help anybody that’s been affected by this,” he said.

Oliver said she spent Tuesday night taking calls from family members in Florida, Idaho and California who called to check up on her son. “I went home after work yesterday and I gave my son the biggest hug,” she said.

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CNN’s Emma Tucker, Alisha Ebrahimji, Hanna Park, Holly Yan, Nick Watt, Celina Tebor and Andi Babineau contributed to this report.