Grief and anger mix as Tennessee plastic plant survivors say permission to leave came too late

Bertha Mendoza made a final call to her husband of 38 years as raging Hurricane Helene floodwaters trapped her and others at a Tennessee plastics plant.

Workers have said they were allowed to leave when water was already swamping its parking lot in Erwin on Friday.

In a call to her husband, Elias Mendoza, Bertha, 56, said she loved him, her son Guillermo Mendoza told NBC News. She asked him to also tell her children she loved them.

“Those were her last words,” said a tearful Mendoza, 33, a minister at First Baptist Church of Erwin. He confirmed her body was found Saturday.

While authorities described their ongoing search-and-rescue operation at a news conference Tuesday, relatives of the missing workers from the Impact Plastics factory expressed frustration that officials had not been consulting families to help find and identify the missing and the dead.

Meanwhile, survivors lashed out at the company for failing to warn workers and making them go to work that day.

Robbie Jarvis, a plant worker, said employees “were all in panic mode” because “the water came up so fast and … we had nowhere to go. We had nowhere to go! We didn’t have a clue.”

“I lost six good friends. Co-workers. We were family there. We all joked all day long. I spent more time with them than anybody else in my family,” Jarvis said in an interview. 

Authorities said that three people are dead and 10 are missing after flooding from Hurricane Helene submerged the eastern part of the state. A spokesman said at the news conference that he did not have information about how many people who worked at the plant were among the dead.

Fernando Ruiz, the son of Lidia Verdugo, one of the plant workers, confirmed to NBC News that his mother had died. She fell into the water from a vehicle that was trying to get her to safety, he said.

A community seeks answers

The tragedy has hit Erwin’s growing Latino community hard and served as something of a wake-up call for local officials. Hispanics make up about 8% of the population.

Mendoza said his family was originally from a small town in Michoacán, Mexico. They decided to move permanently to the U.S. after his dad, an agricultural worker, obtained green cards for his family. “We decided to live here for a while, see if we liked it, and we did, so we’ve been here ever since,” he said.

At the news conference, frustrated Latino family members wanted to know why officials had not asked them for photos or ways to identify their missing loved ones. They also asked why their relatives’ belongings had not been returned to them. 

In response to some of the questions, Myron Jones, a spokesman for the Tennessee All-Hazard Incident Management Team, said that when he first arrived in town, he was not aware of Erwin’s Latino community. 

“That was a failure on our part, for which I apologize, and we would like to make sure we include the Latin American community in everything going forward,” he said.

Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said it is the third flood in which her organization has supported immigrant families, “and we’ve gone through two tornadoes, and consistently, our emergency response systems are not able to meet the particular needs of our communities. … It’s about more than just providing Spanish fliers or interpretation but having specific outreach efforts to the community.”

At an afternoon news conference, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee addressed questions from reporters about whether the town had been sufficiently responsive to its Latino community.

“We want to respond to people in a way that they know we care,” Lee said, as officials noted that translators are now available to assist the families.

Impact Plastics has said in a statement that workers were allowed to leave on time and that it never said they would be fired if they left. It did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said by email that following a request from District Attorney General Steve Finney, TBI agents are investigating allegations involving Impact Plastics. 

Asked about what took place at the plant, Lee called the loss of lives tragic but added that he did not know details of any particular building or place. “There is a lot unknown about what unfolded that day,” he said. 

‘It was too late’

Jacob Ingram told the Knoxville News Sentinel that flash flood warnings were issued while the workers were at the plant and as they watched floodwaters rise in the parking lot. That is when workers should have been evacuated, but instead supervisors told them to move their cars, he said.

“We asked them if we should evacuate, and they told us not yet, it wasn’t bad enough,” he told the newspaper. “And by the time it was bad enough, it was too late unless you had a four-wheel-drive.”

Guillermo Mendoza said his mother was with her sister Araceli Mendoza, who survived, and another woman atop a truck, clinging to coiled tubing covered with hard plastic. Ingram also said he was aboard that truck.

“My mom lost her grip; she had a very sensitive shoulder she was struggling with. She didn’t know how to swim,” Mendoza said, breaking into sobs. “So from there, she lost contact with my aunt.” 

Mendoza, who was on his way to try to help his mom, said he was able to get to railroad tracks behind the plant and saw emergency personnel pick up two women who he thought were his mom and his aunt. 

“Seeing my aunt, I ran to her. I even tripped on myself to get to her. … I was happy to see my aunt alive, but she explained to me she couldn’t find my mom,” he said. Authorities were able to identify his mom because she wore “a special ring” his aunt had given her, Mendoza said.

“My mother was a very godly woman, very strong in her faith, so I know she’s in a better place,” he said.

Francisco Javier Guerrero last heard from his wife, Rosa Andrade Reynoso, 29, a plant employee who is still missing, on Friday morning. She told him that the power had gone out. “She told me goodbye,” he said in an interview with NBC affiliate WBIR of Knoxville, “and to take care of our kids.”