KUOW73%
Longview families, community come together after 11 killed in paper mill disaster 16%
By Kim Malcolm39%
6/1/2026, 6:16:24 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Availability Heuristic, and Hasty Generalization, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 24.5% saturation with 198 hits. Analysis detected 1,238 faulty-reasoning hits from 808 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 32% and a BS Rank of 16% (18,421 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 84.20% of the article peer group.
The body of the last missing worker killed at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company was recovered on Saturday.
Eleven people died last week, after a chemical tank imploded at the plant in Longview, Washington.
Two more people remain in hospital with severe burns.
Seattle Times breaking news reporter Joseph O'Sullivan has been covering events there.
He gave KUOW’s Kim Malcolm this update.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Kim Malcolm: It is impossible to sum up the loss that the families in Longview are facing now.
One person you spoke to said, "It's still hard to grasp the magnitude of what's actually happened."
How is the community as a whole coping in the wake of this?
Joseph O’Sullivan: I think it's striking.
When you talk about a town like Longview, they've had pulp and paper mills there for decades, and it's been a part of Washington's timber industry for a long time, which means there are accidents like this.
This is a town that's no stranger to industrial accidents, and yet this is just on a whole other level.
I think everybody is really feeling that.
And when you talk to people in town, if they don't work there, maybe they had a parent that worked there, they have friends that work there.
There's such a strong connection between everyone in this town, and they're reeling, but they really quickly came together, too.
The union started collecting donations for people affected.
There have been meal trains and GoFundMe’s for people.
They started doing big fundraisers over the weekend.
There was a big all-day fundraiser in Bob's Sporting Goods’ parking lot.
The Shamrock Bar next weekend is having a fundraiser.
They're going to donate proceeds and also all the tips of the servers.
People are really coming together in the wake of it.
You attended a vigil Saturday night.
You wrote that one family member of a victim talked about the need for safety at the mill, and to figure out what led to the tank failure.
Are people getting any answers yet?
It's quite early days, I know.
It's too early.
What we do know is federal investigators showed up on Wednesday.
They've already begun.
That's the Chemical Safety and Hazards Board.
It can take them a year or more to do a complete investigation, which probably sounds a little bit like we would do aircraft investigations in this country.
We don't always get an answer right away.
But, they were on the scene very quickly.
The union, the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, put out a statement over the weekend calling for a complete investigation.
They're calling for making sure that the integrity of the site is preserved, so that investigators can get a full understanding of what led to the incident.
This is a very chaotic scene, and during the recovery, too.
You had this giant tank pour half a million gallons of caustic liquid out.
My colleague Nick Wagner had a drone photo this morning of the site.
You can see all the mangled trucks around the accident site.
This really did a lot of damage inside.
The union wants to make sure that all the pieces are still there for investigators to look at.
You were at a memorial service yesterday for worker Gilberto Bernal.
You wrote that a woman named Crystal Wilson spoke.
Her husband, Robert, died in this implosion.
What stood out for you about what she and others shared about Mr.
Bernal?
Well, it was very sad to see, to be there at the service.
You really got an impression of Gilberto Bernal as someone who spent a lot of his time helping other people, whether it's family and friends, people in the community.
The pastor told a story.
Gilberto was already a member of the church there when the current pastor arrived, and Gilberto, went around the parking lot and changed all the lights.
He operated the lights inside the church.
Crystal Wilson was one of maybe a dozen people at least in the audience who spoke about Gilberto.
She told stories about how, when she needed a lot of help earlier in her life, he would drive her kids to their sports lessons and stuff.
She and everyone else were just really heartbroken by everything.
On Saturday, after the last missing worker's body was recovered, Cowlitz County Coroner Dana Tucker named 10 of the men who died:
Gilberto Bernal, 52.
Tyler Covington, 29.
Brad Covington, 27.
Robert Wilson, 48.
Dale Miller, 54.
Jared Ammons, 35.
Braydon Finkas, 38.
Clinton Doran, 26.
John Forsberg, 51, and Norman Barlow, 58.
The death of the eleventh man, Dillon Miller, was confirmed by family friends on social media.
Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.
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