Tennessee factory employees were swept away by Helene. Their families say they weren’t allowed to leave work in time to flee

By Alisha Ebrahimji and Caroll Alvarado, CNN

(CNN) — The last time Elías Ibarra Mendoza heard his wife’s voice, she was pleading for his help.

“‘Tell my kids that I love them very much and I won’t be able to answer your calls anymore because the phone will get wet,’” Ibarra Mendoza told CNN affiliate Univision of Bertha Mendoza’s last words to him.

He never heard from his wife of 38 years again.

The 56-year-old grandmother was one of 11 Tennessee plastics plant workers swept away by Hurricane Helene’s deadly floodwaters after they tried to leave the facility. Only five were rescued. Four people who worked at the Impact Plastics plant in Erwin are still missing, and two have been confirmed dead, including Mendoza, the Associated Press reported.

Families of the victims and Impact Plastics workers are outraged, demanding answers about why, 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.

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.

Family members of the missing continue to wait in agony for a sliver of news about their loved ones’ whereabouts at a time when many communities are still plagued by a lack of food, water, power and communications. Helene’s robust wind force and powerful floods unleashed over 500 miles of deadly destruction from Florida to the Southern Appalachians last week.

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, the company denies those claims and says all employees had been told to leave the facility at least 45 minutes “before the gigantic force of the flood hit the industrial park,” it wrote in a Thursday night statement.

Both the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration are now investigating the workplace fatalities.

Across six states, more than 200 people have died from the impacts of Hurricane Helene – a number officials fear could rise as rescue operations and relief efforts for affected areas continue one week after Helene made landfall.

Conflicting accounts over what warnings were issued

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, Impact Plastics said in a statement to CNN Thursday. Supervisors “did not prohibit its employees from leaving” and “did not threaten anyone with discharge from employment,” Impact Plastics said.

The company’s claims that its management didn’t stop anyone from leaving don’t line up with what Mendoza family attorney Greg Coleman has heard from others, he told CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlin Collins” on Thursday.

“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.

“The findings are that employees were told to leave the plant at least 45 minutes before the gigantic force of the flood hit the industrial park,” Gerald O’Connor, founder, president and CEO of Impact Plastics, said in a video statement attached to the company’s Thursday statement. “To our knowledge, no one perished while on company property.”

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.

“Subsequent analysis of recorded video footage and photographs has identified both current and missing employees who left the property of Impact Plastics and remained on South Industrial Drive for approximately 45 minutes after the plant’s closure,” the preliminary review said. “This group has since been either rescued or reported as missing or deceased.”

When the first shift at the company started at 7 a.m. CT on Friday, September 27, there was no flooding alert or warning, Impact Plastics claims. 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.

However, multiple flood and storm alerts, along with public warnings from the National Weather Service, were issued for the area including the Tennessee 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 flash flood warning was issued at 9:14 a.m. local time that Friday.

“Move to higher ground now. Act quickly to protect your life,” the latter flash flood warning urged.

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 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 his video statement, noting he and the company released the statement because of “death threats,” but did not provide additional details on the alleged threats.

Employers have eight hours to report a workplace death, TOSHA said, citing Tennessee law in a Wednesday news release. The agency, who is working with TBI to investigate, 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.

“In times like these, words feel inadequate to express the depth of sorrow we are all feeling,” the company said in its preliminary review. “The recent flood has devastated our plant and, more tragically, taken the lives of some of our dear colleagues and friends. Our hearts go out to their families and loved ones.”

‘None of us should have been there’

The Mendoza family is heartbroken as they try to heal from losing Bertha, her son, Guillermo Mendoza told CNN on Thursday.

“She always prioritized the safety of her grandchildren, her children,” he said. “That’s just the kind of person she was to always check up on her family.”

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.

“We’re just trying to heal as a family and bury my mother with dignity,” Guillermo Mendoza said. “There’s a time to heal and it’s right now with our family, and there will become a time to fight, but right now, we’re just trying to come together and heal as a family.”

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.”

It was a different story for Robert Jarvis, another Impact Plastics employee who managed to escape safely, he told WCYB. He made it with the help of a man driving a four-by-four who picked up him 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.”

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.

“It hurts knowing that they didn’t make it, and I did,” Jarvis said, fighting tears.

Now, Jarvis just has 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.”

“It breaks my heart for them, people that we lost,” Jarvis said. “I worked with them every day, and we were like family, we caught up, we joke(d) there. And it broke my heart to see that they died and that they didn’t make it all because of greed, I think.”

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CNN’s Gustavo Valdes, Taylor Romine, Eric Zerkel and CNN Meteorologist Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.