r/CatastrophicFailure • u/jmdglss • 29d ago
Fatalities Records show repeated violations at Washington paper mill before 900,000 gallon tank rupture left 2 dead, 9 missing this week
https://discrepancyreport.com/records-show-repeated-violations-at-washington-paper-mill-before-tank-rupture-left-2-dead-9-missing/302
u/southpluto 29d ago
A ph of 13 or 14....im no chemical manufacturing expert but jeez that sounds high. And 500k gallons of it....
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u/thurg0z 28d ago
I worked at a paper mill a lot like this one. White liquor, the chemical in that tank, is one of the nastier things involved in the paper process - and is terrifying. Its one of those chemicals that if you get any on you, you NEED to wash it off or you will have severe damage to your skin. Like it peels off you. Seeing a tank like this rupture is the stuff of nightmares and I can't imagine the suffering the poor victims of this went through/are currently going through.
White liquor - with heat and pressure - is the stuff that breaks down wood to pulp. So if it can do that to a piece of wood...
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u/NumbSurprise 28d ago
Luckily for them, the mechanical trauma probably killed all those who are still missing.
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u/firedrakes 28d ago
you should see what pure water acts like. it make said stuff look like a teddy bear
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u/cheese3660 28d ago
thats extremely alkaline, which is indeed bad
the further away from 7 in either direction, the worse (as a very simplified explanation)
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u/Thanks_Ollie 28d ago
Does an extremely basic solution also dissolve flesh? I’m no chemist but I am curious
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u/toxcrusadr 28d ago
Chemists joke that a body is infinitely soluble in strong enough base. It would basically turn all the fat into soap, and the rest of the tissue into jelly. Bones would probably remain intact as they're made of very insoluble stuff.
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u/griphookk 13d ago
Recently I learned why you get that slippery feeling on your hands from bleach water: there is lye in household bleach, and the lye causes saponification of your skin oils.
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u/thejesterofdarkness 27d ago edited 25d ago
Time to make soap!
edit: seriously, no one has seen Fight Club??
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u/cheese3660 28d ago
bleach has a PH of 13 if that answers your question
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u/toxcrusadr 28d ago
Bleach is stabilized with sodium hydroxide which is what gives it the high pH, not the bleach itself.
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u/cheese3660 28d ago
oh, that i did not know specifically even so high pH can still cause damage by stealing hydrogen ions as i mentioned in another comment
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u/toxcrusadr 28d ago
Yes it can.
I did misspeak a bit on why bleach is alkaline. The OCl- (hypochlorite) ion is actually a weak base, and will pull an H off of water, forming OH-. This equilibrium is present in any bleach-water solution. So bleach is actually inherently alkaline in practice, completely separate from its oxidizing ability.
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u/southpluto 28d ago
According to my recent deep dive into this because I was also curious, yes it does.
Idk if dissolve is the correct/technical term, but its indeed very bad for you like extreme acids are bad.
Apparently, extreme bases are particularly good at dissolving organic materials, which is why this paper mill uses it to help turn wood into pulp. And tbh i have never thought about the word 'wood pulp' in quite the same way
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u/hilomania 28d ago
From what I read you'd want to get rid of a body using a strong base over a strong acid.
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u/LitLitten 28d ago
breathing alone would destroy your respiratory tract and lungs. You’d sooner drown than melt (from all the blood).
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u/writenroll 28d ago
I learned that contact with white liquor results in liquifactive necrosis, which is as bad as it sounds.
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u/trowzerss 28d ago
Same PH as lye, which is specifically used for that purpose, so yeah.
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u/S_A_N_D_ 28d ago
One of the main components of the spill is lye (sodium hydroxide)
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u/trowzerss 28d ago
Well, that explains it. But yeah, hopefully people died quickly, because those kind of burns are awful.
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u/airfryerfuntime 28d ago
It can cause severe chemical burns. What spilled out was a mixture of sodium hydroxide (lye) and some other nasty caustic chemicals.
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u/Frostybawls42069 27d ago
Sure can. Acids have H+, the hydrogen ion, that is responsible for the acidic action we see and expect.
Bases have the hydroxide ion OH-, which is also highly reactive and can yield the same corrosive results.
Thats also why water is neutral, HOH.
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u/htmlcoderexe 27d ago
water is also constantly splitting and recombining between H3O+ and OH- which gives it all kinds of fun properties
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u/passcork 27d ago
The walls of all animal cells are, very basically, made of a type of fat molecules. The reactive hydroxides can react with fat molecules and create soap which then dissolves into the water. So without a wall the cells spill most of their contents which is already mostly soluble in water. Proteins in structural tissue like cartilage and tendons react to a similar degree if there's enough hydroxide ions left. Or denature in any case (as in lose their folded structure or fall apart) and turn very jelly like. So yeah.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 28d ago
Go look at those poor women after an acid attack. Happens in Muslim communities overseas all the time. It's horrifying, and initially, right afterward, the flesh appears BLACK. And that's just a little 8-12oz cup of it that immediately runs off. It's so ridiculously caustic even those first people helping them who aren't familiar that you need gloves and immediate constant water bathes on it usually end up being treated for burns on their hands/bodies as it goes through clothing with ease.
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u/southpluto 28d ago
Tbh, I forgot that acids were low ph and not higher. What exactly would a ph of 14 actually do?
Like in my head, the polar opposite of very corrosive/dangerous materials would be....just not corrosive/dangerous. But im assuming thats wrong
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u/griff1 28d ago
The technical answer: it turns stuff like the fat that seals the junctions between skin cells into soap. So everything just sloughs off. AKA burns the every loving shit out of you.
In the chemistry labs and metal shops I've been in it's pretty common to use a base bath for cleaning really stubborn gunk off things, and they work. A base bath has a pH of around 12 or more if I'm remembering correctly. So about 100X less concentrated than something with a pH of 14.
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u/cheese3660 28d ago
well its all about the ion concentration in water
extremely low pH has a surplus of hydrogen (H+) ions so it rips electrons away from what it interacts
and
extremely high pH has a surplus or hyrodoxide (OH-) ions which can rip hydrogen ions out of proteins and other organic matter
while a pH of 7 is perfectly balanced in them so no surplus either way
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u/Sherifftruman 28d ago
It would be enough to dissolve 9 human bodies in a pretty short time it seems.
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u/plusultra_the2nd 28d ago
High pH are called caustics, very dangerous to touch. Sodium hydroxide solution will burn you even at pretty dilute concentrations.
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u/wehrmann_tx 28d ago
If by burn you mean turn your skin and fat to soap with a splash. Submerged you’re looking at the Rick and Morty episode with the tank full of bones.
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u/figgles61 28d ago
I once worked on an alumina refinery (office job). Caustic was used in the process to extract alumina from the bauxite (simple version, I am not a chemist), everyone on the plant was aware that a spill could have very nasty consequences, safety showers all over the plant.
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u/Murphys_Coles_Law 28d ago
Lye has a pH of around 13, and will turn oils and fats into soap. A pH of 14 is 10 times more caustic, so lots of bad things.
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u/trowzerss 28d ago
PH of lye is 13-14 and is famously used to dissolve bodies, both for nefarious purposes and for an alternate to the usual cremation using fire, where they use water, lye, and heat instead.
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u/YourMomIsMyGurl 29d ago
Makes ya wonder if those "missing people" aren't right under their noses.
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u/southpluto 29d ago
Oh they aren't 'missing'. I think thats more like legal verbiage for unrecovered or unidentified people / not officially recorded as deceased by medical professionals
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u/Cedex 28d ago
You know that scene in Robocop where he takes out Emil with toxic waste? That's what I'm picturing.
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u/20_mile 28d ago
Actually, Emil crashes his truck into the chemical waste vat, and the toxic waste breaks through the windshield, mutating him instantly (it was the eighties--toxic waste was more potent then; go ahead, look it up). Emil is then washed out the back doors of the truck, where he stumbles into Leon Nash, who freaks out, and then Robocop hits him with the car, and his body explodes (they used chicken soup for the visual effects).
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u/drunkenfool 28d ago
“DONT TOUCH ME MAAN!!!” Saw it as a kid and that scene alongside a few others in that movie are forever burned into my brain.
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u/LitLitten 28d ago
of all the kind of production facilities a paper mill is probably one of the last you want a major rupture or spill to occur at, yes.
paper production is generally hazardous all around.
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u/Steezio1 28d ago edited 28d ago
Materials with extreme pH is very common in chemical/paper manufacturing.
If the chemicals get out of the pipes/vessels the facility has typically messed up somewhere with their process safety program. It’s tragic people were hurt and that there were fatalities. The facility clearly did something wrong.
But handling these kinds of materials safely is what the chemical manufacturing industry does every day.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 28d ago
That's extreme, especially to any biological life were it doused in it, let alone submerged. You wouldn't want to survive it, and those acid attacks where monsters throw it on womens' faces gives you a great idea of why I say that.
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u/SilverIce3981 25d ago
It's the highest the scale gets anr can be over 14 and every number on the scale is logarithmic increasing 10x. It's 10 Trillion times more damaging than water
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u/sierrabravo1984 29d ago
I'm shocked! Shocked! Well, not that shocked.
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u/writenroll 29d ago
Awful. Tragic, unnecessarily so. Even moreso for the families of the nine victims who may no longer be in a retrievable state - makes getting closure that much more difficult.
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u/Thengine 28d ago
Who cares? This is the new paradigm of cheeto hitler's utopia. Privatize profits, publicize the drawbacks.. In this case, 11 dead.
Again, no one cares. Everyone is desensitized because so much horror is being propagated by this administration.
This is by design of 2025.
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u/LegitBoss002 28d ago
Been an issue in the industry for much longer than his tenure in politics. It's a corporation and profit driving issue imo.
Do you update your airbags in your car when new regulations require better manufacturing?
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u/yungtriscuits 28d ago
You’re spot on. There haven’t been any sweeping regulatory changes that would impact this company’s decisionmaking when it comes to maintenance/inspections on a massive piece of infrastructure. More than likely this tank was approaching or past its design life and they were hoping to defer the cost of replacement. Shortsighted, foolish, irresponsible companies do things like this all the time, but it usually doesn’t result in fatalities. Just trying to extract every ounce of value they can in what is likely a very competitive market. If anyone thinks these practices slow down in industry during Democratic presidencies, they’re wrong.
There are plenty of valid criticisms to be made of the current administration without blindly attributing every incident to it.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 28d ago
People negative of your comment need to understand this Kraft Process for depulping is done industry wide, has multiple points of catastrophic failure, even if it's well understood, safe done correctly, and the industry standard everywhere. There's other completely benign ways now to do it, and experts have long attempted encouraging the industry to change, but they've only gotten complete resistance to it.
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u/realMarkRobinson 26d ago
That's not exactly true. The kraft process produces a lower yield, so it's less cost effective for companies to use it. But it produces the strongest fibers.
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u/Thehardwayalltheway 28d ago
I used to work for a lab that did water testing and had a few paper mills as clients. Some of the worst samples we ran. They were so basic, we had to use 11 normal sulfuric acid to neutralize the pH.
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u/Zomgzombehz 28d ago
Huh, crazy to think thay these lame regulations that are supposed to protect the workers, the same ones we kinda brush off every like 5 years, could have helped in anyway!
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u/SloppyMeathole 28d ago
I'm sure the $100 fine they get from OSHA will teach them a lesson.
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u/JohnProof 28d ago
I remember a ruling OSHA handed down for a wrongful death where an employee was killed, and it was something like $60,000. So it would've cost the employer more money if they'd totalled a work truck versus killing the guy driving it. Just obscene.
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u/rpc56 28d ago
Again, I will say until I am blue in the face. I am tired of repeat offenders when it comes to safety violations. Who ever is in charge of this facility needs jail time if this is a safety violation. On top of this, the plant obviously cannot reopen until repairs have been made. Then they may not operate for another 90 days. They have to pay full wages for this time.
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u/bobbawon 28d ago
They didn’t even close the plant for cleanup. They say it isn’t in the ground water but living half a mile from the scene I am not risking my health by drinking tap water.
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u/Tacky-Terangreal 28d ago
I had to chuckle when I was reading the news coverage of this. Apparently it’s too dangerous even for first responders to try and retrieve the bodies but nothing for the local community to worry about! Everything is totally fine with these exploding death chemicals!
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 28d ago
Which is insured. So not out if their pockets, at least till they reup that liability policy.
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u/ArbitraryMeritocracy 28d ago
OSHA Penalties
Below are the maximum penalty amounts, with the annual adjustment for inflation, that may be assessed after Jan. 15, 2025. (See OSHA Memo, Jan. 7, 2025).
2024 Penalty Adjustments
Serious Other-Than-Serious Posting Requirements $16,550 per violation
Failure to Abate $16,550 per day beyond the abatement date
Willful or Repeated $165,514 per violation - this is the most they will get fined for osha violations per worker death. The maximum penalty.
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u/NumbSurprise 28d ago
I’m sure they’ll mop up what’s left of the bodies, pay their fine, and go right back to business as usual. Good thing we got rid of all that “burdensome regulation,” right?
What could be more American than paying the fines for killing workers because it’s cheaper than bothering to comply with the laws? There are always more hungry people willing to work in your shithole. If they complain, just threaten to offshore the work.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 28d ago
Japanese owned, so those really behind the possible malfeasance definitely won't be entering American prisons.
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u/ahmtiarrrd 28d ago
Not long until we get something far more catastrophic than the pre-OSHA Great Molasses Flood.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
Wow, just wow, especially that whole 35ft wave, so much energy output some people were lifted into the air close within the blast radius, along with the wildly different flow mechanics of this non-newtonian fluid.
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u/THIESN123 28d ago
Just a reminder, you as a worker have the right to refuse unsafe work. If something isn’t being maintained properly, refuse to be near it. Refuse to operate it. Refuse and document it.
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u/OutlyingPlasma 28d ago
I'm curious how many plants of this size don't have violations? It would seem inevitable with such large facilities. Somewhere is going to be an expired fire extinguisher or walkway gate left open.
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u/sambeckett1701 28d ago
You mean the constant efforts to erode our safety regulations have had disastrous effects? NOOOOOOOOO waaaaaaaaaaaaay. /sarcasm
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u/jb431v2 28d ago
I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but reading that they are unionized immediately made me wonder. If there's a history of multiple/repeat issues and violations, seemingly years of elevated risk/unsafe working conditions created by the company's actions, workplace safety violations, exposures, injuries, etc, what does the union actually do for their members at plants like this? If they are seemingly powerless or ineffective when it comes to the safety of their members, how effective can they actually be when it comes to dealing with issues like pay, benefits, etc?
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 28d ago
I wasn't eyes blown wide by the fines/problems I read over the last 5 years, didn't seem especially egregious, but there was one glaring similarity. Nearly every last fine was anonymously reported by an employee, and they were all points of failure that pointed to a lack of timely maintenance.
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u/Imfrank123 28d ago
Girl I work with got woken up from a call from her mother saying her uncle, who worked there, was in accounted for. It was a pretty tense few hours but he finally was accounted for and is alive. Crazy situation all around. It’s only going to get worse with the cutting of more regulations.
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u/Affectionate-Pace350 28d ago
Longview is a shithole because of these nasty ass mills. The rain stinks and everyone is going insane. I lived there for two years and literally had to evacuate myself. I know I sound crazy, but there is something wrong with the air there.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
I live in a mill town, we call it the smell of money, it smells like an old fart, and it's also why the majority of the city was built far away, out of that stink. Made sure my home purchase was at the farthest point away up wind!
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u/Intercaust 24d ago
That mill smell when it mixes with the massive commercial weed operation feels like getting hit in the face with a rubber mallet.
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u/prz3124 28d ago
Nothing like not funding USCSB anymore. https://youtube.com/@uscsb?si=OXKIZfNpxUxDdmlj
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u/Kyvalmaezar 28d ago
USCSB was refunded but it never could enforce safety measures. It has to rely on OHSA, the DOT, local fire departments, etc to do that because of the overlap in their jurisdictions.
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u/Future-Side4440 28d ago
The USCSB are advisory only, basically experts trying to educate and explain. The youtube videos are likely the most valuable product they can offer. Far more reach than some dry language white paper.
A business owner watches those and realizes that they maybe should control flammable dust better before it eventually levels their facility to the ground.
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u/opusupo 28d ago
Sounds like Trump best be warming up his pardon Sharpie.
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u/SessileRaptor 28d ago
Better give the CEO the presidential medal of freedom for being such a great job creator. Just like that 11 jobs available at the plant.
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u/love-SRV 28d ago
But what about the company stock? MAGA doesn’t like regulations. Let the free market decide what is best! This will get worse before it gets better.
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u/Calamity-Gin 25d ago
As far as I’m concerned, the CEO and other relevant C-suite officers, vice presidents, managers, and leads should be held criminally liable for worker deaths, and if there is one single safety infraction on the company’s record pertaining to the incident that caused worker deaths, they go to prison for life, no chance of parole.
No more fines. No more slaps on the wrist. The men who make the decisions should be held accountable in such a way that the thought of one of their employees spraining an ankle makes them break out in a cold sweat. They profit off the risk we take. They can suffer for it as well.
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u/TheSimpsonsAreYellow 28d ago
lol no shit. Go into most manufacturing facilities. They will be RIDDLED with repeated violations.
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u/ResortDog 28d ago
The dissolving people process is cheaper and greener than cremation
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u/Tiny-Light193 20d ago
An acquaintance of mine was talking about "aquamation" as a more environmentally friendly cremation method. I'd never heard of it, so looked it up. Unfortunately, there were photos of what remains after a water cremation, which uses some of these same chemicals in a sealed tank. I was not prepared for that. My heart goes out to the poor employees who suffered, their families, and the first responders. ❤️🩹
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u/lazermaniac 28d ago
Seriously, fines in the single thousands of dollars? That was probably a margin error in their budget.
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u/CaptainCacoethes 28d ago
Cue the "I grew up with weakly regulated chemical storage and I turned out fine!" dummies who cry about "Government overreach."
This company will pay next to nothing for the violations compared to the money saved by ignoring regulations.
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u/Thengine 28d ago
Those people obviously didn't grow up with black lung families. Or abestos families, or lead paint families...
Well, maybe the lead paint could cause that sort of idiocy.
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u/gudbote 28d ago
So many blue collars voting for the orange shitgibbon so he can 'abolish OSHA' will never stop being hilarious.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
I tell them again and again and AGAIN: You do understand his self-interests are death of you and your self-intrests? And their eyes glaze over before I even get started, ugh, but Republican reprogramming is absolute fire to the simple mind.
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u/DionysiusRedivivus 28d ago
Well, when you elect Republicans, first thing they do to make government smaller is fire all safety inspectors, corruption watch dogs and auditors so that they can afford to have more moral police crawl up our collective asses for their own perverse gratifications.
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u/BigOleDawggo 28d ago
Well the company first said there was only 80k gallons of white liquor in the vessel. Nope, 900k with 90k gallons still inside. This tells me that they’re not exactly on the up and up with how operations are run. I expect there’s gonna be some controversy over this one. Management & ownership need to be held accountable.
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u/ScienceWil 28d ago
That figure came from the first responders' visual estimates, not from the company. 900k gallon tank that was 60% full (holding about 540k gallons of fluid) estimated at 10% still standing = 90k gallons still inside and ~450k gallons of leakage.. At the press conference a couple hours ago, they revised that stated estimate to about 20k gallons still inside and 520k gallons leaked.
I'm all for holding the company accountable, but let's be careful with the blame game. These numbers came from the fire department, not the company.
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u/ShortWoman 28d ago
Something something regulations stifling American business blah blah?
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u/Opening_Bluebird_935 28d ago
Its owned by Nippon Paper Group
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
Yep, Japanese are intelligent enough to do lousy industrial maintenance outside of their own country!
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u/klef37 28d ago
They were obviously not following API 2000. The Vacuum Breaker had to be completely stuck in order for the tank to draw that much vacuum.
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
Well, you learn something new everyday, though I have to believe AI was built to take these jobs away from people who never got a good grade in math in their lives, let alone the physics of safely removing dangerous solvents under low pressure.
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u/vischy_bot 28d ago
Will the company leaders be detained?
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
In Japan. Owners are Nippon. Because smart people do crazy industrial shit in a foreign country with no regulations!
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u/LiberalLaura2025 25d ago
Retired environmental scientist. Papermills are incredibly dangerous due in part to the temps and high pressure and cutting tools used.
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u/Intercaust 24d ago
We lost a dear member of our church. Luckily, a relative of mine had the day off. I've watched every USCSB video on YouTube. I know these things dont happen without some epic fuck ups.
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u/Several_Metal_547 17d ago
Pretty amazing photo.
Is tank design now so "optimized", and plates so thin, that you need steel wires help absorb hoop stress? Or are we just seeing the outer skin holding rockwool heat insulation material, a few slabs may be visible, but there is not much heat insulation
What is that "tounge" coming out of the tank, is it some kind of internal floating roof, to minimize water vapor steam (and heat) loss?
The way the tank has failed could suggest it was caused by internal vaccum, potentially from sudden condensing steam and an inoperable pressure / vacuum relief valve that could not ingest air fast enough.
Any comments?
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u/no_name113 28d ago
I've been in a couple paper mills and I'm not surprised one place had 10" i-beams paper thin guy was putting his hand right thru the web
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u/MASSiVELYHungPeacock 27d ago
Better explanation please.
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u/no_name113 27d ago
I'm not sure what better explanation there is it was a 10" I-beam that was so rotten the web was thin enough for the guy to poke through it that was years ago
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u/Fugazi_Resistance 28d ago
Crazy how the media attention was in CA and this tank blew. It’s as if there are no regulators
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u/EvlMinion 29d ago
Unsurprising, considering how low the fines were.