The families of two men who died in a May chemical tank implosion at Longview’s Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company facility have sued the company.
The lawsuit – filed Friday in Cowlitz County Circuit Court against Nippon and Weyerhaeuser, the company that originally built the paper mill – alleges that Nippon failed to act on multiple inspections that showed the tank was at risk of failure.
The lawsuit was brought by the families of Dillon Miller and Clinton “CJ” Doran, two of the 11 men who died after a tank holding a caustic chemical used in the paper-making process known as “white liquor” imploded May 26, releasing 900,000 gallons of the scorching hot liquid into the surrounding mill.
They are seeking an amount of money to be determined at trial.
The lawsuit comes after the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board released a report in August stating Nippon knew that “Tank G” was “not fit for continued service,” but continued to use the tank. Ten months before the implosion, an inspector contracted by Nippon found that the tank was dangerously thinning and that there was “high likelihood/consequence of failure,” investigators wrote.
The tank was inspected thrice in the ten months before it imploded and each time inspectors raised concerns about the thinning walls of the tank, according to the investigation.
Nippon and Weyerhaeuser did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the families’ lawsuit, a separate tank, which Tank G emptied into, was removed from service for repairs the morning of the implosion. Tank G continued filling, with nothing to empty into, causing it to nearly completely reach its 1.2 million gallon capacity by about 6:30 a.m.
Workers began arriving for their shift around 7 a.m., the lawsuit alleged, and gathered near the tank in the mechanical and electrical maintenance shops for morning meetings.
Seventeen workers were on ground level when the tank imploded at 7:09 a.m., according to the lawsuit. Two workers in a mechanical maintenance shop died, as did eight in an electrical maintenance shop and one in a courtyard near the tank. The lawsuit does not identify where Miller and Doran were at the time of the implosion.
Doran widow Alisa Bondar told KGW, which first reported the lawsuit, that they had gotten married a year prior and were planning to visit her family overseas together. Bondar, who immigrated from Ukraine, said her family never got to meet her husband.
Bondar and Doran wanted a “simple life,” she told KGW. “That’s why he was working so hard.”
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