The Associated Press reports:
As the rain from Hurricane Helene came down harder and harder, workers inside a plastics factory in rural Tennessee kept working. It wasn’t until water flooded into the parking lot and the power went out that the plant shut down and sent workers home.
Several never made it. The raging floodwaters swept 11 people away, and only five were rescued. Two of them are confirmed dead and part of the death toll across the affected states that passed 150 Tuesday.
Four others are still unaccounted for since they were washed away Friday in the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, where dozens of people were rescued off the roof of a hospital.
NBC News reports:
Workers have said they were allowed to leave when water was already swamping its parking lot in Erwin on Friday. In a call to her husband, Elias Mendoza, Bertha, 56, said she loved him, her son Guillermo Mendoza told NBC News. She asked him to also tell her children she loved them.
“Those were her last words,” said a tearful Mendoza, 33, a minister at First Baptist Church of Erwin. He confirmed her body was found Saturday. Meanwhile, survivors lashed out at the company for failing to warn workers and making them go to work that day.
Knoxville’s CBS affiliate reports:
One Impact Plastic’s employees — Jacob Ingram — said lives could have been saved, had employees been allowed to leave the facility sooner. “I didn’t hear anyone say ‘leave’ or nothing like that. I actually asked one of the higher ups,” Ingram said. “They told me ‘no, not yet.’ They have to ask someone before we was able to leave, even though it was already above the doors and the cars and everything else.”
The company released a statement following the tragedy. Its representatives said the company monitored weather conditions, dismissing employees when the facility lost power and water began to cover the parking lot. Ingram said that isn’t what happened. “No. The plant lost power, and we were still not to go home or leave,” he told WVLT News. “We were still there 15 to 20 minutes after the plant lost power.”
Videos from survivors are going viral on TikTok.
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