Officials in Longview said Wednesday that the response to a chemical explosion at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging plant had shifted from rescue to recovery after Gilbert Bernal was killed in the blast and one other person was confirmed dead. Nine other people were still unaccounted for and were presumed dead, while eight other people were injured.
The change in posture came as investigators said the work could take days. Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue Chief Scott Goldstein said Wednesday morning that crews were no longer treating the site as a rescue operation, and Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said he was bracing for the event to become the deadliest industrial tragedy in modern Washington State history.
For Bernal’s family, the news arrived before daylight. Juan Bernal said he learned on Tuesday morning from a phone call with their mother that his oldest brother had died, and he described being in disbelief. Gilbert Bernal had worked at the Longview plant for years, he said, and never missed a day of work. He leaves behind a wife, two children and a grandchild.
Juan Bernal, the youngest sibling in a large family that grew up in the Yakima area of Washington, said his brother was the kind of man who put everyone else first. He said Gilbert Bernal was a hardworking man who taught him to want to be hardworking too, and he remembered him as a Christian who went to church every Saturday. A fundraiser started by Todd Cornwell is now aimed at helping the Bernal family cover unexpected costs.
Goldstein said the nine missing employees were in their workspaces when the blast happened, though some workers were in break rooms and others were going into or leaving work during a shift change. That detail has become central to the investigation, because the rupture came at a moment when the plant was full of people moving between the end of one shift and the start of another.
Officials also said part of the Columbia River was contaminated, along with nearby ditches, after the blast. Brian Wood said continuous monitoring showed spikes of high-pH material reaching the river at about 7:15 in the morning and again two or three hours later. New estimates put about 25,000 gallons of white liquor still in the damaged tank, far below the 90,000-gallon figure announced on Tuesday.
Matt Amos said recovery efforts began Wednesday and would continue to be slow, methodical and deliberate, with responder safety and dignity for the victims at the center of the work. As crews recover people from the site, they will be decontaminated before being transferred to the Cowlitz County Coroner for identification and family notification. For Bernal’s relatives and the other families waiting for word, the answer is now effectively fixed: the search is no longer for survivors, but for the bodies of those still missing.
