The remains of all missing victims in a Washington state paper mill explosion have been recovered, officials announced Saturday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cToday, on day five of this incident, I can share that we have recovered the ninth and final missing employee of this incident,\u201d Longview Fire Chief Brad Hannig said in a Saturday news conference. <\/p>\n
Recovery efforts had been ongoing since Tuesday\u2019s chemical tank implosion and rupture <\/a>at the Nippon Dynawave plant in Longview. Two victims were transported to hospitals and later died<\/a>, bringing the death toll to 11. <\/p>\n The deceased were identified as Gilberto Bernal, 52; Tyler Covington, 29; Brad Covington, 27; Robert Wilson, 48; Dale Miller, 54; Jared Ammons, 35; Braydon Finkas, 38; Clinton Duran, 26; John Forsberg, 51; Norman Barlow, 58; and Dillon Miller. <\/p>\n The tank was designed to hold 900,000 gallons of a hazardous chemical known as white liquor, a chemical brew that contains sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and disodium carbonate and is used in the paper-pulping process, officials have said.<\/p>\n The implosion happened at 7:15 a.m. as workers were in a shift change, according to officials.<\/p>\n Kurt Stitch, deputy chief with Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue, said the recovery process was \u201cmethodical and incredibly difficult for everyone that\u2019s been involved.\u201d That effort included moving heavy items indoors and conducting drone flyovers \u201cto make sure that we were not missing anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Officials had been diluting high-pH water in ditches that were contaminated with chemicals that spilled. Stanfield said Friday that there has been improvement in the pH levels in the ditch system.<\/p>\n The ditch sits atop an aquifer and a well field from which Longview gets its drinking water, he said. But officials stressed that contaminated water was diverted away from the wellhead area and that that Longview\u2019s water is safe.<\/p>\n The investigation into the cause of the implosion is ongoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The remains of all missing victims in a Washington state paper mill explosion have been recovered, officials announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-675455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/260527-Nippon-Dynawave-Plant-ww-1556-f1aeb7.jpg\")
A vigil for victims of the tank collapse in Longview, Wash. on Tuesday.Mathieu Lewis-Rolland \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n