One worker said Impact Plastics managers would not let employees leave, which company denies
Several employees at a plastics factory in eastern Tennessee were killed during Hurricane Helene or are missing, amid warnings that the storm’s current death toll of more than 130 is likely to rise substantially as subsiding floodwaters allow rescuers to search through the wreckage.
Impact Plastics confirmed there had been fatalities at its plant in Erwin but did not say how many people had been killed. The company said there were missing and deceased employees as well as a contractor.
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Jacob Ingram, a mold changer at the company, told the Knoxville News Sentinel that as the flooding started, managers instructed employees to move their cars away from the rising water – but would not let them leave. “They should’ve evacuated when we got the flash flood warnings, and when they saw the parking lot,” he said to the newspaper. "When we moved our cars, we should’ve evacuated then … we asked them if we should evacuate, and they told us not yet, it wasn’t bad enough.
The thing is you never expect it to get so bad that you might die it’s more like you think you’ll be stuck at work overnight or something like that and unfortunately it’s not worth losing your livelihood over having to spend a night at work. Unfortunately by the time people realize how bad it is it’s usually too late.