“I made my peace with God. I was going to die.”

As the muddy waters of the Nolichucky River exploded around him, covering the parking lot of Impact Plastics and making the only road in and out of the Erwin, Tennessee factory impassable, this is the thought that kept racing through Robert Jarvis’ mind. “I knew I was going to die,” he repeated, emphasizing the mortal terror of that moment. “I made peace with God.”

Jarvis had only been working at Impact Plastics for five months, but in that short amount of time he had grown to love the tight knit crew of employees whose labor made the factory boom and its owner, Gerald O’Connor, a very wealthy man.

“All the workers were like a family,” Jarvis said. “We all joked, cut up with each other. We all got along.”

Friday, September 27 was “a normal day when we came in to work,” he said. But by that afternoon, six of Jarvis’ coworkers were dead and dozens of lives — their family, their friends, and Jarvis’ own — would be tragically and forever devastated by the losses and trauma endured that day.

What remains of the road into the industrial park where Impact Plastics was located. Photo: Skylar Baker-Jordan/100 Days in Appalachia.

Erwin is a sleepy, working-class town of about 6,000 people roughly twenty miles south of Johnson City, Tennessee. Best known for the hanging execution of a circus elephant and the expulsion of Black residents in the early 20th century, in the 21st century its population has diversified with immigrants, mostly from Mexico, moved to the seat of Unicoi County for economic opportunities in factories like Impact Plastics. 

Tennessee’s Hispanic population has been increasing exponentially this century, and that’s even true for Erwin. By 2020, 8% of Erwin’s nearly 6,000 residents were Hispanic or Latino, up from a reported 2% at the turn of the century. Nearly 20% of the town lives in poverty.

Many of those who perished on September 27 were Mexican immigrants. Some of the missing employees spoke only Spanish. 

Some survivors and family members believe these factors contributed to the tragedy. “I don’t think if my cousin and his non-Hispanic coworkers wouldn’t have said anything they would have got anything,” Jamie Dixon, whose cousin Jacob Ingram was one of the employees who went missing in the flood, told WBIR.

Ingram survived, but six of his coworkers did not. The lives lost include Bertha Mendoza, who recently celebrated her 56th birthday with her famous tres leches cake; Monica Hernández, who called her sister Guadalupe to say goodbye to her family as she clung on for dear life; Rosa Andrade, a young mother and wife who was “so loving” according to her grieving cousin; Johnny Peterson, a loving father of four whose son plays for the undefeated Unicoi County High School Blue Devils football team. Sibrina Barnett and Lydia Verdugo are also among the deceased.

Damaged businesses line what was once the road in and out of Riverview Industrial Park in Erwin, Tennessee. Photo: Skylar Baker-Jordan/100 Days in Appalachia.

Who’s responsible for the deaths, in a state notorious for valuing profits over people? CNBC this year ranked it the eighth best state in which to do business, and the third best state economy for businesses. An Oxfam study released last month, however, reveals the state is one of the worst places to work, with the Tennessean reporting that the Volunteer State “ranks among the bottom 10 states due to its policies on wages, worker protections and rights to organize.” Oxfam gave Tennessee an overall score of just 12.49, ranking it 47th out of 50 states for workers.

Gerald O’Connor and Impact Plastics deny responsibility for the deaths of their employees. “We are devastated by the tragic loss of great employees,” O’Connor said in a press release. “Those who are missing or deceased, and their families are in our thoughts and prayers.” The company says it was monitoring weather conditions and dismissed workers in time to get home. The company maintains that “at no time were employees told that they would be fired if they left the facility” and that for the plant’s Spanish speaking employees, bilingual employees “were among the group of managers who delivered the message.”

A company spokesperson reached by 100 Days in Appalachia declined to comment further, referring us back to the company’s press release. Calls and emails sent directly to Gerald O’Connor and Impact Plastic’s financial executive Susan Chambers were not returned.

However, eyewitness accounts from employees, including Jarvis, dispute the company’s story. Jarvis says two employees, who 100 Days in Appalachia could not reach for comment and thus will not name, were told they would be fired if they left. He and others assert O’Connor, at least, was not there when the flooding hit. “The owner was there taking video in the parking lot, just smiling and laughing,” Jarvis says. “Then he took off before we all got to leave.”

Despite getting along well with his supervisor, Johnny Peterson – “he was a really good guy,” Jarvis says – and his coworkers, Jarvis does not know O’Connor. “I saw him a couple of times, but he never spoke to me,” he said.

Jarvis said Peterson was informed of employee concerns. “We told Johnny, but Johnny said it’s out of his hands. We have to be at work.” 

He said he had few interactions with Chambers, who was sometimes “rude.” On that Friday, Jarvis says that Chambers told him to move his car to higher ground but would not allow him and his fellow employees to leave. “At that time, there was no land in the parking lot whatsoever. I mean, it was all wet, just covered in water.” He again asked Chambers if he could leave, but he says she told him not until she spoke with O’Connor. About ten minutes later, she said he could. “But it was too late,” he says. “It was too late then.”

Jarvis’ story is corroborated by coworker Jacob Ingram, who told local CBS affiliate WVLT that he was also told to wait until they had permission to leave. 

Yet another factory employee, Zinna Adkins, says that despite getting emergency weather alerts telling them to flee the area, management would not release them. “We were all talking to the supervisors and telling everybody, ‘Look, we don’t need to be here,’” she told WJHL, an ABC affiliate in Johnson City. “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.”

Debris litters this closed portion of Interstate 26 in Erwin, Tennessee. I-26 runs alongside Impact Plastics, with the Nolichucky River on the other side of what was the factory. Photo: Skylar Baker-Jordan/100 Days in Appalachia.

Ingram posted horrific videos to Facebook showing his escape from Impact Plastics, saying a comment on his post that they were filmed about half an hour before the semi truck he and other employees clung to for dear life was overturned by debris, throwing several people to their deaths as they were swept away by the raging water. “I’ll remember their faces forever. I’ll remember their names forever,” he told WBIR, an NBC affiliate in Johnson City.

Jarvis says the images of his coworkers and friends dying haunts him. “I’m not sleeping at all. Every time I shut my eyes, I see one of the girls that died smiling at me because she smiled at me right before everything went down. It’s a struggle right now. It’s really, really hard to cope with all this.” 

He was only able to escape with his life, Jarvis says, because of the help of two people. The road out of the factory was impassible, so “they had to cut the fence on I-26…. They were pushing cars out. Then when that got impossible to get out that way, the guy got a tractor, made a road up there so people can get out.” His car, however, was already floating down the river by that point. He jumped out and got in the back of what he describes as a “jacked up truck.”

“That guy saved my life. I think a lot of people’s lives,” he says.

Impact Plastics says it is organizing a recovery center for employees, WVLT reported. However, Ingram and Jarvis say they have not heard from the company since the flood.  

The sun sets over what remains of the Riverview Industrial Park in Erwin, Tennessee. This photo was taken on October 3, 2024, nearly a week after a devastating flood caused by Hurricane Helene claimed the lives of six Impact Plastics employees. Photo: Skylar Baker-Jordan/100 Days in Appalachia.

Impact Plastic’s employees are not the only ones looking to talk to company officials. The Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the matter, including why — as of Wednesday, October 2 — the company had not reported the deaths to TOSHA. This was more than five days after the deaths occurred, and Tennessee state law only gives employers eight hours to report a workplace fatality, according to the Tennessee Outlook.

TOSHA’s investigation is secondary to that of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into whether any criminal violations occurred. Impact Plastics spokesperson Tony Treadway  told the Associated Press that the company “has not been contacted by the TBI yet but will fully cooperate with their investigation,” PBS reported on Wednesday.

For Jarvis, the investigation can’t come soon enough. “I hope he goes to jail,” he says of O’Connor. “He murdered my friends, my family, because of greed, because of corporate greed. They wanted more money. We shouldn’t have been at work that day. We shouldn’t have been there.”

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This article was originally published by 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit, collaborative newsroom telling the complex stories of the region that deserve to be heard. Sign up for their weekly newsletter here.