The families of the 11 Tennessee plastics plant workers swept away by Hurricane Helene’s deadly floodwaters are demanding answers from the company after its officials claimed no flood warnings or alerts were issued before the start of the workers’ shift, contradicting official weather reports.
Only five of the Impact Plastics plant employees in Erwin were rescued. Four people who worked at the plant are still missing, and two have been confirmed dead, The Associated Press reported. Communities are still plagued by a lack of food, water, power and communications after Helene’s robust wind force and powerful floods unleashed over 500 miles of deadly destruction from Florida to the Southern Appalachians last week.
Two state investigations are unfolding into the tragedy as employees, victims’ families and company owners offer differing accounts of the hour before floodwaters overtook the area.
Families of the victims are outraged because they say employees were made to work during extreme weather conditions, and some were told they couldn’t leave as warnings of heavy rainfall in the flood-prone area poured in.
Impact Plastics has forcefully denied those claims, saying late Thursday the allegations are false, and no employee was stopped from leaving.
Here’s what we know about the tragedy and the state investigation:
Company accounts of storm warnings conflict with workers’
At least two workers at Impact Plastics said they were told to keep working last Friday, just over a mile from a hospital where more than 50 people had to be rescued from the roof due to high floodwaters that same day.
Meanwhile, Impact Plastics told CNN a preliminary review of the September 27 flooding event showed all employees had left the plant less than an hour after power went out at the facility and public warning alerts were sent to cell phones.
Supervisors “did not prohibit its employees from leaving” and “did not threaten anyone with discharge from employment,” the company said in the statement on Thursday.
Elías Ibarra Mendoza, a 56-year-old grandmother, is one of the two employees who died. Greg Coleman, her family’s attorney, told CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlin Collins” on Thursday the company’s claims that its management didn’t stop anyone from leaving don’t line up with what he has heard from others.
“The problem with that narrative is that’s not what a lot of people are saying or agreeing with. In fact, the exact opposite,” Coleman said. “We’ve already talked to several that, let’s just say, are opposed to what the company is saying.”
Senior management was the last to leave about 45 minutes after the plant had been closed and all other employees had been dismissed, the company said.
An employee who made it out of the building safely told WCYB when he asked if he could leave work after seeing a flooded parking lot, he said he was told no. Another employee, Jacob Ingram, told CNN affiliate WVLT he was told, “No, not yet” when he asked to leave.
Sedans and pickup trucks were submerged in brown, murky, fast-moving water as high winds roared in the background, as seen in a video taken by Ingram, who told WVLT he believed lives could have been saved if people left earlier. In one video, more than half of one company building was swallowed by floodwaters.
Impact Plastics said its parking lot is in a low-lying area and prone to pooling water, but their review showed water in the lot was about 6 inches deep around the time people were dismissed. The “front of the plant appears to have been passable,” the company said.
Multiple flood and storm warnings issued before start of fatal shift
When the first shift at the Impact Plastics factory started at 7 a.m. CT last Friday, the company claimed there was no flooding alert or warning. Water started to pool in the parking lot around 10:35 a.m., the power in the plant went out at 10:39 a.m. and public warnings were sent to cell phones around a minute later, according to the company.
That contradicts the multiple flood and storm alerts, along with public warnings from the National Weather Service, that were issued for the area including the Erwin plastics plant prior to the start of the workers’ last shift.
A flood watch, which included warnings of Helene’s rain, was issued for the area on Tuesday and a flood warning from the National Weather Service was issued at 3:59 p.m. local time on Thursday.
At 8:14 a.m. local time that Friday, a flash flood warning was issued for Unicoi County, where the factory is located, according to the National Weather Service. By 10:51 a.m., the flash flood warning in the county was updated to a flash flood emergency.
When CNN asked Impact Plastics about the discrepancy, they declined to comment, saying they had “no additional information as the company cooperates with other reviews.”
“Employees were directed to leave the plant property within minutes of the power outage and certainly no later than 10:50 AM,” which was communicated in both English and Spanish, the company said. Senior management, including its founder, president and CEO Gerald O’Connor, went through the facility to attempt to move the company’s server and important documents, and were the last people to leave around 11:35 a.m., it said.
O’Connor ordered a review the day after the flooding, he said in a Thursday video statement, noting he and the company released the statement because of “death threats,” but did not provide additional details on the alleged threats.
A truck owned by a neighboring company and driven by its employee picked up some factory employees, according to Impact Plastics, but rising water tipped over the truck and “five employees and a contractor aboard the truck went missing,” the company said in its statement.
Five others who were also on the truck when it tipped over made their way to safety and were later evacuated, according to the factory. Senior management called emergency responders for help and a National Guard helicopter safely airlifted the five employees, the company said in a statement.
Employers have eight hours to report a workplace death, TOSHA said, citing Tennessee law in a Wednesday news release.
The agency, which is working with the state bureau of investigations, hadn’t yet received a fatality report from Impact Plastics as of Wednesday evening. It was not immediately clear if there were any workplace deaths, as the company’s founder says nobody perished on company property. The preliminary report from the company also said, to its knowledge, no one was trapped inside the plant or on the premises.
CNN has reached out to the Unicoi Emergency Management Agency for comment but has not heard back.
‘We had one way in, one way out,’ worker recalls
The Mendoza family is heartbroken as they grieve the loss of Bertha, her son Guillermo Mendoza told CNN on Thursday, as he described his mother as always prioritizing the safety of her grandchildren and children.
The family had just celebrated Mendoza’s 56th birthday last month. Now they are planning for the funeral they never expected, according to a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her funeral expenses.
Employee Monica Hernandez also lost her life in the floodwaters, her family said.
“She always had a smile on,” her niece Elizabeth Ramirez told Univision. “She was always very happy. You couldn’t wipe that smile off her face.”
Another Impact Plastics employee, Robert Jarvis, told CNN affiliate WCYB he managed to escape safely with the help of a man driving a four-by-four who picked him up and others, effectively saving his life.
Jarvis reported to work on Friday morning, despite the area experiencing flooding from Helene’s wrath, when the power went out at the factory, he told the station. Shortly after, another employee texted him and told him the parking lot had flooded, so he went to move his car to higher ground – there wasn’t a dry spot on the lot, he said.
“We had one way in, one way out,” Jarvis said. “And when they told us we could leave, the one way out was blocked off, so we were stuck in traffic on that road, waiting to see what we’re going to do.”
Now, Jarvis has just one question for Impact Plastics: “Why’d you make us work that day? Why? We shouldn’t have worked. We shouldn’t have been there. None of us should have been there.”
CNN’s Emma Tucker, Eric Zerkel and Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.
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