Several workers from a Tennessee plastic factory were swept away in the raging floodwaters from Hurricane Helene, leading the survivors to blame company management for not sending them home before the water reached dangerous levels.
Robert Jarvis, who was working at the Impact Plastics factory in Erwin on Friday, told News 5 WCYB that he asked to leave after the facility lost electricity and the “parking lot flooded”:
“I said, ‘Can we leave?’ And the woman said ‘No, not until I speak with Jerry,'” he recounted.
By the time management dismissed the workers, Jarvis said “it was too late.”
“We had one way in, one way out… when we were told we could leave, that one way out was blocked off,” he explained, before describing how his car began floating away before a good Samaritan came and rescued him in a truck.
“Came and picked us up and saved a bunch of our lives, or we would’ve been dead too,” Jarvis said of the man.
Another employee, Jacob Ingram, posted several videos to Facebook showing just how fast the dangerous waters were moving as he took refuge with others on top of a semi truck driven by an employee from the neighboring PolyPipeUSA company.
Debris kept hitting the truck and knocked two women into the rushing water before the entire vehicle flipped over, Ingram told the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Holding on to a plastic band wrapped around large pipes is what saved his life.
“I wedged my hands into it, and it took everything I had to hang on,” he said. “I seen them [the pipes] floating down river, so that’s what gave us the idea. We knew it was floating.”
Ingram and four other employees floated for about half a mile before stopping at a pile of debris, from where they were eventually saved by a Tennessee National Guard helicopter.
While several employees were rescued, six fellow Impact Plastics workers were swept away by the water.
“We were all talking to the supervisors and telling everybody, ‘Look, we don’t need to be here,’” another survivor, Zinnia Adkins, told WJHL. “Our phone alerts were saying we need to flee the areas. And they never said anything about it. And supervisors didn’t tell us that we could go.”
She told the outlet that out of the six people from the factory that were lost, three are dead and three are still unaccounted for.
Rosa Reynoso is one of the employees who still has not been found, five days later.
“I worked with Rosa every day,” Adkins said. “She was so sweet, and she don’t need to be missing, or her family don’t need to be going through none of this if they [Impact Plastics] would just said ‘go’ or ‘y’all don’t need to work today.’”
“They knew there was a chance, we work next to the river. None of this would be happening. None of the families would be going what they’re dealing with,” she added through tears.
One of the confirmed fatalities, 56-year-old Bertha Mendoza, was one of the women who fell off the truck. She was trying to stay afloat with her sister when she became separated, leading to her body being found two days later, her family said on a GoFundMe page for her funeral expenses.
“She was loved dearly by her family, community, her church family, and co-workers,” her relatives said, adding that they “stand with all those families impacted and we could never have imagined this type of loss affecting our loving Bertha.”
Mendoza and at least one other victim were Mexican nationals, Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition told NBC 15 News.
Rosa Maria Andrade Reynoso, Lidia Verdugo Gastelum, and Monica Hernandez Coron still have yet to be found, according to the Daily Beast.
The company has denied that they waited too long to send their employees home, with an Impact Plastics senior manager telling WJHL, “Employees were dismissed by management to return to their homes in time for them to escape the industrial park.”
“We are devastated by the tragic loss of great employees,” company founder Gerald O’Connor said in a Monday statement obtained by NBC. “Those who are missing or deceased, and their families are in our thoughts and prayers.”
Meanwhile, some of the survivors are saying that Impact Plastics is lying.
“Impact Plastics has not tried to contact me in any way shape or form. So I don’t believe that they have any heartfelt sympathies,” said Adkins.
“It was lies,” Jarvis told WCYB in reference to the company’s statement.
“Why’d you make us work that day…. We shouldn’t have worked… none of us should have been there,” he said when asked what he would tell his managers.
“It breaks my heart for them people that we lost — every one of them were good people,” he continued, saying they were all like a “family.”
“It broke my heart to see that they died… all because of greed, I think,” Jarvis added.
