ERWIN, Tenn. – Among the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene and the countless stories of loss and hardship, one particular tragedy is under investigation after the deaths of several workers at a plastics company in East Tennessee.
Robert Jarvis, an employee at Impact Plastics in Erwin, is consumed by anger and frustration as he recalls the terrifying events of last week when several of his coworkers were swept away by floodwaters outside the plant. He recounts how he and his colleagues were forced to continue working despite the deteriorating weather conditions.
“We were all working and the power went out,” he told FOX 39 in Greeneville. “I got a text … from another employee saying that the parking lot was flooded.”
Panicked, he tried to move his car to higher ground, as the parking lot became submerged. Jarvis said there was only one way out – a narrow road that was quickly becoming blocked.
Jarvis said that despite his co-workers’ pleas to be allowed to leave, they were told to stay put as other employees were reportedly trapped in the floodwaters outside.
“We were in panic mode,” he said. “The water was coming up, and then we did what we had to survive. It was a guy in a 4x4 who came, picked a bunch of us up, and saved our lives, or we’d have been dead too.”
A company spokesperson confirmed to FOX Weather that only two of the seven people missing in the flood have been located, with their bodies being recovered earlier this week. A third body was located Thursday, county officials said.
“It hurts knowing that they didn’t make it, and I did,” Jarvis said. “It just doesn’t seem fair to me that they didn’t make it.”
The company will probably face zero legal consequences under some bullshit state law exception. But they’ll be destroyed by the civil lawsuits from victim families when that finishes winding it’s way through the courts in a decade.
In the meantime the owner will try to shut the business down, pulling as many funds as possible out of it to start a new company, probably nearly identical and even in the same area. If the manager that made the decision wasn’t the owner, they’ll be thrown under the bus to try to deflect away from the owner. The owner won’t face any direct repercussions.
We’ve seen this scenario happen numerous times, we know exactly how it will end up, because we don’t care enough as a society to actually enforce accountability from corporations.
The manager wont be “thrown under the bus” the manager will “get whats coming to him”
Its part of junior and middle managements job to ha e the balls to make sure higher ups eat the shit sandwich when they HAVE to. The owner who isnt there on site has to rely on you to say “No sir, we ARE shutting down production and evacuating. Not doing so puts the staffs lives at risk. Fire me if you want but please advise me of which legal firm you want me to send the wrongful termination paperwork to when you do!” and hang the phone up.
The most senior employee on site is the person who is to blame. The owner somewhere else might have (quite honestly) not understood the magnitude of what was going on. “The carpark is flooding” is an accurate description for an inch of water, a foot of water and cars being carried away.
You can be thrown under the bus and deserve to be hit by the bus at the same time. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.