As the community of mill workers and Longview grieve the 11 lives lost, a search for answers to whether anything could have prevented the tragedy gets tougher as KIRO 7 News has learned there are no required inspections of tanks holding white liquor by state or federal regulators.
According to University of Washington associate professor at the Department of Occupational Health Sciences Marissa Baker, Ph.D., says it’s up to operators of plants, like the Nippon Dynawave Packing Company, to ensure facilities that deal with the caustic chemical are safe and secure.
“It is really left to the owner, the operator of the individual mill to ensure that they are doing all that and keeping those maintenance logs and doing those inspections,” Baker said.
Baker is also director of UW’s Northwest Center for Occupational Health and Safety and a member of the EPA Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals.
She says while Washington State’s regulations typically go further, it’s not considered by federal authorities as something that requires inspection like Oil and Gas facilities.
“We know that [White Liquor] is highly hazardous. We know that it’s caustic, we know that it obviously causes very large and very immediate burns and can lead to very rapid death.” Baker said, “It’s very hazardous, but it is not a chemical that typically falls under kind of the OSHA or EPA threshold for chemicals that are regulated kind of above and beyond the typical chemical regulations.”
Baker says that had the tank been underground, inspections and other regulations may have been required by the Washington Department of Ecology.
Now that the remains of all the victims had been recovered, the Washington Department of Labor and Industries is investigating the incident and can issue fines or violations if issues are found that lead to the rupture.
“Employers are required to assess the hazards on their work site, including those involving storage tanks and the handling of hazardous chemicals,” L&I said in a release about the investigation.
According to the Washington State Standard, L&I does not conduct tank inspections. Baker says companies and operators have a financial motivation, outside of just a motivation to keep their workers safe and alive, to inspect and keep tanks in good working condition.
“Why shouldn’t the workplace be able to keep their tanks in good condition?” Baker said, “It is part of maintaining a healthy and safe workplace for their employees. It’s part of maintain their investment. The structural integrity of their tanks, their chemical storage system, is certainly related to their bottom line and their ability to keep doing work.”
Though Baker admits, there is a role regulations and government inspections play in workplace safety.
“Not every business is going to opt into that unless there is kind of a regulatory force behind them to kind of force them to do it. We’ve seen this time and time again with industry.” Baker said.
Washington L&I expects to use the full 180-day investigatory period to look into the disaster.
The U.S Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, an independent agency without regulatory authority, will also be leading an investigation into the rupture, however, the Trump Administration has proposed to defund the agency for the second year in a row. For 2026, Congress ended up allocating $14 Million to continue the agency’s operations.
“CSB generates unprompted studies of the chemical industry and proposes regulations they have no authority to create or enforce. This function should reside within agencies that have the authorities to issue regulations in accordance with applicable legal standards,” reads the President’s budget proposal.
Congresswoman Marie Glusenkamp Perez, who represents Longview in Washington’s Third District is on the committee that will oversee the CSB portion of the budget request. She spoke out against its defunding on Sunday.
“I’ll be making my priority they have the resources they need for thorough, unbiased investigation.” Glusenkamp Perez said.
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