Safety concerns, leaks, and near misses: New issues unveiled at Nippon Dynawave plant in Longview
Jun 25, 2026, 6:35 AM
Yellow police tape is seen on May 27, 2026 outside the Longview paper mill where a deadly chemical tank failure occurred. (Photo: Claire Rush, The Associated Press)
(Photo: Claire Rush, The Associated Press)
KIRO 7 has uncovered a new safety concern from an employee at the Nippon Dynawave Packing Plant, the site of an implosion that killed 11 people in May.
It marks the deadliest industrial incident in recent Washington State history.
“I have some questions slash concerns about some safety situation at Nippon Dynawave,” a voicemail said to the Washington Department of Labor and Industries (L&I).
KIRO 7 reached out to the worker for clarification, but they did not want to talk, so we are not naming the person.
The call was made on May 6, less than three weeks before the deadly implosion. Professor Marty Cohen, the Director of the University of Washington’s Department of Environment and Occupational Health, said that kind of tip would have been difficult to dive into in the time before the implosion.
“That’s really hard because you know, there’s no specific information,” Cohen said. “What are they going to do? So that’s hard for anyone to deal with.”
Cohen believes Washington L&I, as well as the U.S Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), will take the tip into account during their full investigation.
The voicemail came with records that detailed an incident where a man fell into a sinkhole filled with hot water and paper materials, known as pulping stock, less than three months before the implosion.
L&I found that a valve had been left open, leading to the stock to be spilled. A worker who was trying to close the valve was unaware of a sinkhole that formed nearby and fell into it, with the stock reaching chest high.
“At the time, operations were moving quickly to restart production, and there was pressure to get the system back online,” one witness reported.
Cohen believed CSB will look into any culture of pressure at the Nippon Dynawave facility.
The worker wasn’t injured, and he noted in his report that at first he didn’t want to report the incident, but a supervisor said it was a “near miss” and reported it to L&I.
“Because people feel comfortable and safe to report an incident like this, of a near hit incident, there’s some feeling for a good safety culture,” Cohen said. “Because if they didn’t feel comfortable to be able to report something like this, then they wouldn’t report something like this.”
The tank that imploded was the subject of issues identified by the WA Department of Ecology. In the spring of 2024, the agency’s records showed they noted a leak on a valve in a specific tank, called the G tank.
The report said that it was first noted by staff in December 2023, and there was a plan to replace the valve when the tank went offline during the next Total Mill Outage, a process where the entire plant is taken offline for repair processes.
The documents showed that during the outage, the G tank was not taken offline, thus the valve leak was not addressed.
As of November 2024, the WA Department of Ecology noted that an update was “not provided” by the company.
KIRO7 has reached out to Nippon Dynawave to find out if the valve had ever been replaced, and to respond to the issues found by Ecology and L&I, but we did not hear back.
The Department of Ecology did not cite a fine to Nippon Dynawave for the leak, as it wasn’t a violation of its permit. As KIRO7 has uncovered, neither Ecology nor L&I has the authority to inspect tanks that hold White Liquor. Inspections are the responsibility of the company.
