Tuesday marks one week since 11 men lost their lives when a tank ruptured, causing a blast that scattered equipment, trucks and a deadly potent chemical known as white liquor across the Nippon Dynawave Packaging plant.
On Monday, the Washington Department of Labor & Industries announced the start of their investigation as all victims had been recovered from the facility.
The U.S Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board is also looking into the tragedy. While both have a significant investigative authority, neither has the power, nor does any regulatory body in the U.S or Washington state, to inspect the tanks that hold White Liquor.several-week-long
“L&I has statutory authority to make sure the company is following the rules, but that doesn’t include authority to conduct inspections on things like the integrity of this type of storage tank.” said Matt Ross, a public information officer with L&I.
The inspections are up to the companies themselves. State Senator representing Longview and Southwest Washington Jeff Wilson, a Republican, used to be on the property when owned his previous company.
“We’re like the industrial janitor. My previous company’s responsibilities were to pre-clean tanks so that they can be either inspected or to provide upgrades.” Wilsons said.
Cleaning was one part in a several-week-long process of shutting down the mill so that inspections and maintenance could be done on areas that are unable to be worked on while the mill is in operation.
Wilson says it took weeks of preplanning to get the hundreds of workers to efficiently get the work needed finished so the Mill could come back online.
“It’s a lot of pressure for shutdowns because these are 24 hour processes. You have workers, just hundreds of workers on site cleaning and welding and repairing and inspections.” Wilson said.
Wilson was aware that no regulatory agency has an ability to inspect, just ‘voluntary’ inspections the company conducts itself. Rep. Joel McEntire, a Republican who also represents Longview, was surprised by that revelation.
“Frankly, find it hard to believe.” McEntire said, “You can’t hardly eat a box of raisins without 10 regulations letting you do so.”
“That would come out in the investigation and that would be another interesting thing to look into is whose job is it to actually make sure that these containers are doing what they’re supposed to do and that they’re up to snuff.” McEntire continued.
Both McEntire and Wilson say they will consider bills that change laws in order to prevent another tragedy, but they “don’t know what that rule or regulation is yet,” as McEntire puts it because the investigations have just begun and the L&I investigation is likely to take the full 180 days, according to the agency.
“I think that there should be this instance should require us to look much deeper into the above ground storage tanks.” Wilson said, “I am open to looking at this, but I don’t want to jump the gun too early. I want to respect the work of the state and federal agencies.”