The owner of the Tennessee factory where workers drowned after Hurricane Helene won’t face charges

The owner of a factory where six workers died last year in flooding from Hurricane Helene won’t face charges after a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation found no criminal wrongdoing. First Judicial District Attorney General Steven Finney announced the decision to close the case on Friday, saying no further action will be taken.

The investigation found no evidence that Impact Plastics employees were told they could not leave the factory or that they would be fired if they left, according to a news release from the district attorney. It also found employees had a little more than an hour during which they could have evacuated from the Erwin, Tennessee, industrial park. The conclusion mirrors that of a similar investigation by the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration that found in April that workers had time to evacuate the premises, albeit by makeshift routes.

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A statement from Impact Plastics attorney Stephen Ross Johnson on Friday said company president and founder Gerald O’Connor welcomes the results of the TBI investigation.

“The true and accurate facts are now known,” the statement reads.

Five employees and one contractor who cleaned the offices once a week were killed on Sept. 27 after they were washed away by floodwaters. They were among 12 people who stuck close to the Impact Plastics building, waiting for the water to recede, after realizing the exit road was already submerged. When the water kept rising, they climbed onto the bed of a semitrailer loaded with giant spools of plastic piping that was parked outside the factory. When floodwaters eventually overwhelmed the truck, six people were able to use the piping for flotation and were later rescued. The other six drowned.

The TOSHA report notes that several Impact Plastics employees did escape the flood. Some were able to drive or walk over an embankment to a nearby highway after workers at a neighboring business dismantled a fence there. Others escaped by driving over a makeshift path onto nearby railroad tracks that an employee at a neighboring business created with a tractor. Still others were able to escape by walking to the railroad tracks, according to that report.

Although the criminal case is being closed, the company still faces a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of Johnny Peterson, and other civil suits are planned.

Attorney Luke Widener, who represents the families of several flood victims, said in a statement that they “categorically disagree that Impact Plastics employees were given any meaningful opportunity to escape. …Indeed, if Impact Plastics’ account were true, Bertha Mendoza, Sibrina Barnett, and the others who perished would still be with us.”