On a misty morning in May in south-west Washington state, Laura Oltmann, a 41-year-old dietitian, had barely clocked in when an unfamiliar overhead announcement echoed through the hospital. But this one, we don’t get very often,” recalled Oltmann. Doctors, nurses and staff began guessing what could have happened.
Perhaps it was a train derailment. Maybe a major highway crash. As the speculation grew, so did the uncertainty.
Staff started calling one another. The answer shook them all. Forty miles south, in the port city of Longview, residents had awakened to a thunderous boom.
At approximately 7.18am, as workers changed shifts at a paper mill company, Nippon Dynawave Packaging, a tank of white liquor, a caustic chemical used in the paper-making process, imploded. Hours passed with no explanation of what had caused it or how it could have happened at all, and suspicion began to brew. With roughly a thousand people working at the mill, thousands more were waiting for a phone call.
Grandparents called grandchildren. Nowhere was that impact felt more deeply than in Longview itself, a working-class city of about 38,000 people whose economy and identity have long been tied to the paper industry, shipping and logging. For generations, families have depended on the mills for their livelihoods.
The disaster struck at something the city had long regarded as permanent: the mills where generations had gone to work, and helped many send their children to college or put down a down payment on a home. The implosion rippled through nearly every corner of a community affected by mill closures and economic change. Those concerns will likely have an impact at the ballot box.
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