Widow sues Nippon Dynawave Packaging over fatal Longview white liquor tank collapse

Operations & Footprint Regulatory & Legal 1 Sep 2026

Widow sues Nippon Dynawave Packaging over fatal Longview white liquor tank collapse

The widow of an electrician killed when a white liquor tank collapsed on 26 May 2026 at Nippon Dynawave Packaging's mill in Longview, Washington, has sued the company in Cowlitz County Superior Court. The claim cites a US Chemical Safety Board preliminary report from August 2026, which found that inspector Applied Technical Services had told Nippon staff the tank was not fit for continued service and faced a high likelihood of failure unless repaired. The mother of two other workers who died filed a separate wrongful death suit in August 2026.

Why this mattersA safety board finding that the tank was flagged as unfit before it failed widens the operator's litigation exposure and puts pulp-mill tank inspection practice under scrutiny.

Mackenzie Ammons, widow and personal representative of electrician Jared Ammons, filed a wrongful death claim in Cowlitz County Superior Court in September 2026, represented by Seattle firm Osborn Machler & Neff.
The US Chemical Safety Board's August 2026 preliminary report found that inspector Applied Technical Services had told Nippon staff the tank was not fit for continued service, with a high likelihood of failure unless repaired.
A white liquor tank collapsed at 7.09am on 26 May 2026 at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging mill in Longview, Washington, releasing an estimated 900,000 gallons of heated caustic chemical used in papermaking.
The tank had a capacity of 1.2m gallons and the white liquor is maintained at around 200 degrees.
Jared Ammons and seven other workers were in the electrical maintenance shop for a morning meeting when the liquor broke through the walls, doors and windows, trapping everyone inside.
The mother of two workers who died, Bradley Kyle Covington and Tyler Scott Covington, filed a separate wrongful death suit against the company in August 2026.
Inspection reports in July 2025, October 2025 and February 2026 flagged severe corrosion and thinning of the tank's carbon-steel shell, per Chemical Safety Board findings cited in the suit.
The lawsuit does not specify a dollar amount for damages.
King's complaint alleges more than a dozen failures including inadequate equipment maintenance, inspection, training and emergency response.
Nippon Dynawave Packaging said it could not comment on active litigation.
Damages sought in King's suit are not specified until trial.

Nippon Paper Industries

Sources tdn.com worldvoice.news worldvoice.news spokesman.com nipimpressions.com globalpapermoney.com globalpapermoney.com

Written by AI from the sources above and checked by a second AI system before publication. No human wrote or edited this story. How it is made.

Updates

2026-09-20 · Edited before publication: Attribution error in the summary and final key fact: the source says the mother of two workers, Bradley Kyle Covington and Tyler Scott Covington, filed the August wrongful death suit, not the workers themselves, who are not described as injured survivors. Corrected, added the court and the trapped-workers detail, and softened the 'why it matters' line, which drew a concl
2026-09-20 · Edited before publication: Summary contained a grammatical error that made a false statement (the tank, not the mill staff, was said to have been told it was unfit) and ran to four sentences against house style of two or three. Facts otherwise supported by the source body, including the encoded passages. Materiality and topics unchanged.
2026-09-21 · Update: Nippon Paper Group confirms 11 dead and two missing from the Longview tank collapse, says the EPA found no residual risk to air or water quality, and has pledged a safety audit across its other US plants.
2026-09-21 · Update: The wrongful-death suit filed by Mackenzie Ammons cites a US Chemical Safety Board finding that inspections in July and October 2025 and February 2026 had flagged severe corrosion in the failed tank.
2026-09-21 · Edited before publication: Thirteen key facts against a limit of six, and the casualty and environmental facts rest on an aggregator source that contradicts itself and the other source (one dead and nine missing versus eleven dead and two missing; 500,000 versus 900,000 gallons) and contains evidently fabricated passages. All facts carried only by that item were removed, including the death toll a
2026-09-21 · Edited before publication: Grounding holds: the Ammons suit, Osborn Machler & Neff, the Applied Technical Services finding in the August 2026 CSB preliminary report, the 1.2m-gallon tank, 900,000 gallons, 7.09am on 26 May 2026 and the Covington suit are all in the tdn.com source. Materiality reduced from 4 to 3: the event is a second wrongful death filing citing an already published preliminary fi
2026-09-23 · Update: The widow's suit specifies that inspector Applied Technical Services warned Nippon three times - in July 2025, October 2025 and February 2026 - that the tank's corroded shell faced a high likelihood of failure.
2026-09-23 · Update: Sheri Lynn King's complaint, filed on behalf of her two sons killed in the collapse, alleges more than a dozen specific safety failures at the Longview mill, and Nippon Dynawave says it cannot comment on active litigation.