At a Tennessee Plastics Plant, Sorrow and Uncertainty in Helene’s Wake

ERWIN, Tenn. — The few details that are known about Bertha Mendoza’s last moments are heartbreaking.

On the morning of Sept. 27, after remnants of Hurricane Helene flooded the parking lot of a plastics factory in the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, Mendoza, her younger sister and a group of their co-workers clung to the bed of a pickup trying to flee from the rising waters.

When the situation became dire, Mendoza, a 56-year-old mother of four, managed to call her husband and some of her children to tell them she loved them, said one of her sons, Guillermo Mendoza.

“She was able to say farewells, and in one of her last conversations with my father, she said, ‘I love you, and please tell my children that I love them,’” Mendoza said in an interview in his two-story wooden home in Erwin. “I thank God that even in those last moments, my mom is in danger, and she still thinks about her children.”

It was part of one of the most horrific episodes spawned by Helene, the Category 4 hurricane that hit the coast of Florida on Sept. 26. Initial reports said that an estimated 11 workers, some of whom were immigrants, were washed away outside the factory in Erwin, which sits along the banks of the Nolichucky River and is about 120 miles from Knoxville.

But nine days after the tragedy, little clarity has emerged about what happened, what role the company, Impact Plastics Inc., played and even how many employees may have died.

Bertha Mendoza’s body was found two days after the flood near a bridge not far from the factory, where she worked in quality control. Her sister, Araceli Mendoza, survived.

Family members of the victims and survivors have told advocates of immigrants that the workers were told not to leave the factory even as the downpour began.

“It was unclear if or when employees were allowed to leave,” said Hamp Price, a spokesperson with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, an immigrant rights group.

Organizers with the group were told that the workers “didn’t have evacuation instructions at all,” in either English or Spanish, Price said. There were also reports of Spanish speakers trying, in vain, to communicate with English speakers during the chaotic evacuation.

At least three workers were found dead and three others remain missing, advocates said.

Since the storm hit, local authorities said they have recovered bodies of four people who died in the storm, and six people remain unaccounted for. It is unclear how many of them originated from the factory, said Myron Hughes, a spokesperson with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency’s All-Hazards Incident Management Teams.

Various agencies, including the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said they were investigating what played out at the plant.

Erwin, a small mountain town of about 6,000 people, has seen a large influx of Latinos in recent years. They make up about 8% of the population, lured by work in strawberry and tomato fields and in factories like Impact Plastics. The town also attracts tourists who come to hike about 150 miles of forest trails and visit the Nolichucky River that overlooks the Cherokee National Forest.

In a pair of lengthy statements, managers with the company refuted allegations made by workers and their advocates. The managers said the workers were never told they were required to stay in the building during the storm, and that they were told to evacuate as soon as the plant lost power that morning.

Company management said that some workers lingered in the parking lot after they were given the green light to go home.

When flooding from the storm overtook the factory’s parking lot, a group of workers tried to flee on a pickup truck that belonged to the business next door, Impact Plastics said. But after the rising water caused the truck to flip over, five of the workers and a contractor disappeared, the company said in its statement. Five other workers who had climbed onto the truck made it to safety, the company said.

Greg Coleman, a lawyer representing the Mendoza family and some of the other victims, said in his own statement that he is aware of the version of events released by the company that “appear to place blame on the victims who lost their lives, and by extension their families and those injured.”

“The true facts are continuing to be investigated, and that will be the true story,” he said, adding that his clients and witnesses “have differing opinions from that of the company narrative.” But for now, Coleman said he and his firm, Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman PLLC, want to focus on helping families heal.

Members of the Mendoza family were left to grieve and figure out what happened.

“It’s hard to process, but at the same time we have seen God through our community, through our church. Everyone has been so supportive,” Guillermo Mendoza said.

The Mendozas were one of the first families to move to Erwin. Bertha Mendoza’s husband, Elias Mendoza, 59, first came to the area to work in the fields. He said that once he had secured legal residency, he brought his wife and two children from a small Mexican town in Michoacán.

At first, moving to the mountain region of Tennessee proved challenging for his wife, he said. “There were not a lot of Latinos back then, and she didn’t speak English,” he said.

In the coming years, she began to adjust. She had two more children in Tennessee and befriended other Latinos at a Baptist church in the area. Her sister Araceli told her about work at the plastics factory, where Bertha Mendoza worked on and off over the years.

Guillermo Mendoza, her son, who is a pastor, a school board member and an educator, credits his mom’s dedication for his success in the community.

“My mother was really supportive my whole life,” Mendoza said. “She wanted a better life for her children than the life she had growing up.”

Bertha Mendoza enjoyed cooking traditional Mexican dishes for her family, including tamales, tres leches cake, mole and homemade tortillas. She also loved recording videos with her four grandchildren.

The Mendozas always looked forward to the month of September. Bertha Mendoza celebrated a birthday on Sept. 2. Guillermo Mendoza turned 33 on Sept. 22, and his younger brother and his son were both born Sept. 23.

“It was an unspoken rule. We said no more births in September,” Guillermo Mendoza said.

Sept. 27, the day Bertha Mendoza died, is also the anniversary of Guillermo and his wife’s wedding. After the tragedy, September will be “a difficult month going forward,” he said softly.

Mendoza’s husband still returns home every night looking for his wife of nearly 40 years.

Most nights, he said, he turns over in bed and looks for her. On the past few nights, he has reached to her side of the bed, only to be reminded that it’s empty.

“That’s hard. When I see her clothes, I feel something that is hard to explain,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .