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Labor and Industries and federal investigators to probe Longview tank rupture; company pledges cooperation
Summary
State labor regulators and federal investigators will examine the incident; the company says it reported pH spikes to Ecology and will cooperate, while officials said recovery activities will continue independently of investigatory needs for now.
Joel Sachs, director of the Department of Labor and Industries, said his agency has "a number of open inspections" and will conduct an investigation into the incident; he said inspection results will be released when they are concluded.
Scott Goldstein addressed the role of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, saying the CSB's needs will be identified and coordinated but that victim recovery operations remain the priority: "The recovery will proceed as all steps needed to engage that recovery. Then the site recovery will begin and that will be coordinated by our environmental agencies with the chemical safety boards contact."
Company representative Brian Wood said Nippon Dynaway Packaging will "cooperate to the maximum extent that we can with the investigation" and called for a full and complete investigation. Officials said multiple agencies — Labor and Industries, Ecology, EPA, the Coast Guard and other state and federal partners — are involved in parallel steps: inspections, environmental monitoring, mitigation planning and eventual root-cause and regulatory reviews.
Officials repeatedly stressed that investigative timelines and specific inspection details are not yet available while recovery and family-notification work continues. "I can't and I can't speak to them today," Sachs said of specific inspection details. He and Goldstein said the findings of root-cause analysis and inspections will provide specifics later.
The company and state officials also noted permit reporting and regulatory obligations tied to any environmental releases; technical and legal determinations will follow inspections and formal investigations.
