The son of a longtime Toledo community member and current clerk for the City of Napavine may be among those who were caught in the Nippon Dynawave Packaging paper mill chemical implosion on Tuesday.
Family and friends of Braydon Finkas started two independent and legitimate GoFundMe fundraising accounts Thursday around midday. The two accounts suggest that Finkas is one of the nine people who were originally unaccounted for after the incident.
According to local sources, Finkas is the son of current Napavine city treasurer and former longtime Toledo city clerk-treasurer Michelle Whitten.
As previously reported by multiple outlets, including the Washington State Standard and The Seattle Times, a tank containing up to 900,000 gallons of a corrosive chemical substance commonly referred to as white liquor imploded early Tuesday morning at the site of a Longview paper mill owned by Nippon Dynawave Packaging.
During an on-site press conference held Thursday afternoon, Longview Fire Department officials announced that their teams had recovered six of the nine individuals who had been unaccounted for since the tragedy occurred Tuesday morning. The officials did not identify the recovered victims and said the bodies would be decontaminated and transferred to the county coroner for identification and family notification.
In response to questions during the press conference, Longview Fire Department Battalion Chief Matt Amos said his teams located the six individuals in a staff room where they would have prepared for or left from a shift. The incident reportedly occurred during a shift change when employees would be coming in and out.
“It was an area for where they would congregate in the mornings,” Amos said. “Thats where they are.”
The remaining three have not yet been located by recovery teams. According to Amos, recovery teams are working their way slowly through the site and using drones, images and other testing to avoid hazards. They also will not enter an exclusion zone established around the collapsed tank which is the origin of the contaminating chemicals.
Authorities have not yet publicly confirmed that Finkas was involved in the incident and it’s unclear if his remains have been recovered. The two GoFundMe pages started for Finkas state they are intended to help support his family. They identify Finkas as one of the original nine who was unaccounted for after the incident.
The GoFundMe created by Missy Catt and shared on Facebook by Whitten states specifically that Finkas was employed by Nippon Dynawave Packaging and is one of the nine who are the goal of local recovery efforts. The other account clarifies that he worked as an electrician for the company and describes the need to raise money to support Finkas’ partner, Kaitlyn Kincaid.
The two accounts had gathered more than 80 donations in the first few hours of being posted with more than $10,000 raised.
Both accounts offer endearing descriptions of Finkas, describing him as “gregarious” and recalling his importance to his community starting with Castle Rock where he grew up and extending to Cathlamet where he and Kincaid lived.
To visit the GoFundMe pages, visit https://tinyurl.com/ye25rnmt or https://tinyurl.com/yjatkzpf.
