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The death toll from a chemical spill at a paper manufacturing plant in Washington state has risen to 11 after rescue teams recovered the bodies of all nine workers who had been reported missing.
Authorities confirmed the development on Saturday, days after a massive storage tank collapsed at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company facility in Longview, triggering a large-scale search and recovery operation.
Longview Fire Department Chief Brad Hannig said rescue crews had recovered the final missing employee, bringing the operation to a close.
The incident occurred on Tuesday during an early morning shift change when a 900,000-gallon tank containing a large volume of white liquor ruptured.
Officials had earlier confirmed two fatalities immediately after the accident, while nine workers remained unaccounted for.
White liquor is a highly caustic chemical solution made up of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide and is commonly used in the paper-making process to break down wood chips into pulp.
The collapse released tens of thousands of gallons of the substance, prompting emergency response efforts at the facility.
Nippon Dynawave Packaging, a subsidiary of Nippon Paper Group, manufactures single-use paper containers and supplies customers across North America, Asia and other regions. The company says it produces about eight billion single-serve containers annually.
