Investigators in Tennessee say the management of plastics company gavve employees enough time to leave its facility before flooding from Hurricane Helene swept away workers and led to the deaths of six people.
“Investigators with Tennessee OSHA worked closely with law enforcement and conducted witness interviews, reviewed surveillance footage, and spent time at the Impact Plastics site,” Chris Cannon, the chief communications officer for the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, told The Independent.
“After considering the evidence, TOSHA determined that company management exercised reasonable diligence in dismissing employees and providing them sufficient time to leave the facility safely,” he said. “Because work operations had stopped and employees had left the building, TOSHA has concluded the tragic deaths of the Impact Plastics employees were not work-related and therefore do not fall within its jurisdiction.”
Victims of the flooding blasted the report’s findings and timeline, saying that eye witnesses would confirm it had been too late for employees to leave before the floodwaters struck.
Flooding hit Tennessee and the Carolinas as Helene bore down on the mountainous regions of the Southeast. Many communities experienced historic flooding and pictures of the damage dominated the news. Impact Plastics became the focus of coverage after five employees and one contractor were killed in the storm.
In a statement provided to The Independent, attorneys for and Impact Plastics, Inc., and its founder and Gerald O’Connor said that it welcomed the results of the investigation.
“Critically, and contrary to what was reported by some in the media, Tennessee OSHA ‘found no evidence that employees were threatened with termination or forced to work beyond a safe evacuation point,’” they wrote.
“Impact Plastics and Gerald O’Connor continue to concentrate on seeing to the needs of members of the Impact Plastics family and grieving over the wonderful people who were lost in the flood. Mr. O’Connor is focused on rebuilding Impact Plastics for the benefit of the employees, the customers, and the community. Impact Plastics intends to continue to play a vital role in Erwin’s flood recovery,” the lawyers said.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said its own separate investigation remains ongoing.
Impact Plastic’s own preliminary review of the events of September 27 found that employees had been directed to leave the plant property “no later than 10:50 a.m.” That’s around 10 minutes after the plant lost power.
O’Connor said that video footage and photos from that day showed missing employees had stayed on the road near its parking lot for 45 minutes after the plant closed.
"To Impact Plastic’s knowledge, no one was ever trapped in the building or on its premises," O’Connor said.
In December, Impact Plastics and O’Connor were sued by the family of one of the employees who perished in the catastrophic flooding. The $25 million-dollar suit alleged that workers were forced to stay at their posts even after managers knew conditions were growing dangerous.
Impact Plastics has denied claims it was responsible for the employee’s death.
"To the extent Impact Plastics' actions were in violation of the law, which Impact Plastics denies, Impact Plastics did not knowingly act in violation of the law, nor did Impact Plastics show reckless disregard for whether Impact Plastics was acting in violation of the law," it said.
Some family members of employees who died did not cooperate with Tennessee OSHA’s investigation, Knox News reported Wednesda.
Attorneys representing former employees and their families told the publication that the report had left out witness testimonies and other evidence and criticized Impact Plastics’ response.
“We vehemently disagree with any characterization that Impact Plastics exercised reasonable diligence in dismissing employees. The facts simply do not support such a finding, as flood waters were already too high and too strong when Impact Plastics finally, and begrudgingly, allowed workers to leave,” Luke Widener, an attorney who partners with Greg Coleman to represent Robby Jarvis and other former Impact Plastics employees or their families, said in a statement provided to The Independent on Thursday.
“Even so, by the time Impact Plastics finally communicated this, they failed to inform all employees. While workers at the surrounding businesses evacuated safely, Impact Plastics held its employees back, putting them in serious danger — which ultimately resulted in their injuries and deaths. While we agree with TOSHA’s suggestion that Impact Plastics should improve its emergency plans, this comes far too late for our clients,” he said.
In September, Jarvis told The Independent that people had “lost their lives for no reason.”
“They put profit over our lives. That angers me,” Jarvis said.
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