Tennessee Investigating Plastics Factory Where Helene Flooding Killed 11 Workers
A Tennessee plastics factory kept workers going until it was too late to evacuate before Hurricane Helene flooding swamped the building, employees have said. Now, the company is likely facing liability lawsuits and heightened workers’ compensation costs after the deaths of 11 people.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is looking into the circumstances at the Impact Plastics factory in Erwin, at the behest of the local prosecutor, District Attorney General Steven Finney, said in a statement.
“Early yesterday morning, I spoke with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and requested that they look into allegations involving Impact Plastics in Unicoi County, Tennessee,” Finney said. “Specifically, I asked that they review the occurrences of Friday, September 27, 2024, to identify any potential criminal violations.”
Several employees who escaped last week said the company ignored warnings and would not allow workers to evacuate in time to avoid the swiftly rising floodwaters of the Nolichucky River, according to Forbes magazine, the Associated Press and multiple other news reports.
Four other workers were still missing as of Wednesday, the AP reported.
A company spokesman told the news service that firm officials were devastated by the loss of employees. The manufacturer had not been contacted by investigators but will cooperate fully. The company also is preparing its own review of the tragedy.
The Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it, too, is investigating. Companies by regulation have eight hours to report a workplace fatality, but Impact had not provided a report by late Wednesday, AP noted.
Some workers reportedly were able to drive away from the plant, about 50 miles north of Asheville, but others were trapped by clogged roads as water swept away vehicles, news sites reported. One worker filmed the rescue of some by a Tennessee National Guard helicopter.
Worker Robert Jarvis told WCYB TV news that the plastics company should have let people leave the site sooner.
Tennessee workers’ compensation law, as of 2022, provided $10,000 in burial costs and up to $1,060 in weekly fatality benefits to surviving family members of workers killed on the job. The maximum total benefits allowed was $477,000, according to the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute’s latest compilation. Spousal benefits cease upon remarriage.
If family members or plastics factory workers who were injured in the flood want to contest the amount of benefits, they may have troubling finding legal representation. A number of Tennessee workers’ compensation attorneys have said in recent years that lawyers across the state stopped practicing comp law after 2013 legislation, which limited some disability payouts and limited attorney fees to 20% of the award.
Workers’ comp appeals to the Tennessee Supreme Court plummeted after the 2013 changes, from 425 in the five years before the legislation, to 39 in the five years after, the state’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation explained in an annual report in 2018.
Meanwhile, about 150 miles southeast of the plastics factory, two firefighters lost their lives when a tree fell on the fire truck during Helene’s winds and heavy rains, the Associated Press reported. The men were a fire chief and a new fireman in Saluda, South Carolina.
South Carolina workers’ comp law in 2022 provided a maximum of $903 in weekly benefits for surviving family members, up to 500 weeks.
In Macon County and Madison County, North Carolina, two sheriff’s employees died in raging floodwaters from the Cullasaja River, news sites reported.
Photo: A photo of the Impact Plastics plant was not available Thursday but the Unicoi County Hospital, nearby, also sustained heavy flooding in the storm, and workers and patients had to be rescued from the roof. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)