Factory CEO left workers to drown during Hurricane Helene, lawsuit claims, while the boss evacuated

10/22/2024 / By Belle Carter

The CEO of a factory ordered his workers to stay inside their facility and continue working to meet targets and deadlines as Hurricane Helene devastated the rural town of Erwin in Tennessee. In the end, of the 11 employees who were swept away by the raging floodwaters, five were rescued, four were missing and two were confirmed dead.

Johnny Peterson, 55 years old, was one of two workers at Impact Plastics who are now confirmed dead from the flooding. He drowned in the flooded factory on Sept. 27. His family is suing the company and its CEO, claiming that the bosses sneaked out of the factory to escape catastrophic weather conditions while they ordered employees to stay.

According to an explosive 28-page lawsuit filed by Peterson’s family in Tennessee state court, Impact Plastics had no required plan to safely evacuate employees, even though the plant was located in a flood plain and regularly experienced water creeping into its parking lot.

“Based on information we’ve uncovered, including accounts from surviving employees, we believe this tragedy could have been avoided,” Zack Lawson, the family’s attorney, said in a statement to Knox News. “Impact Plastics was aware of the flood risks, and while employees requested permission to leave, the company failed to act. We will hold them accountable.”

As per the suit, the managers denied employees’ pleas to leave work despite receiving notifications from the National Weather Service around 10 a.m., which urged all who could to evacuate to higher ground.

Thirty minutes later, the company managers told employees to move their cars because the parking lot was flooding. An hour later at 11:35 a.m., senior management including the founder and CEO Gerald O’Connor had “stealthily exited the building,” according to court papers.

Following this, the workers thought that they were dismissed since local schools and other businesses had announced closures because of the hurricane. However, the same managers instructed them to continue working because the company “wanted to meet order deadlines,” court documents further indicated.

They were only sent home when the floods already reached the plant’s parking lot and the power went out.

Peterson was able to step outside but he then went back into the building to help employees “trapped inside.” Sadly, he eventually became trapped himself after the water made it impossible to leave by car. He was able to climb onto the bed of a semi-trailer attempting to escape the area.

“He texted his daughter for the last time at 1:17 p.m. ‘I love you allllll,’ he managed to type out. This was the last text Alexa Peterson received from her father.”

According to the latest reports, another person from the factory was still missing after being washed away. (Related: Hurricane Helene death toll now over 200 as disaster relief operations continue.)

TBI, TOSHA probe Impact Plastics, O’Connor

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSHA) immediately launched a probe on Impact Plastics concerning its eleven employees who were washed away by floodwaters back in September.

Earlier in October, O’Connor released a video statement about a preliminary internal review of what happened in the facility that week.

O’Connor started the video by saying that he and his family have been receiving death threats.

“The flood of Sept. 27 took from our Impact Plastics family some great employees. One was a personal friend of more than 30 years of working together,” the CEO said. He continues by saying that he ordered an immediate review of the events and timeline of what occurred at Impact Plastics on the day of the flooding.

“The findings are that the employees were told to leave the plant at least 45 minutes before the gigantic force of the flood hit the industrial park. There was time to escape,” O’Connor claimed. “Employees were not told at any time that they would be fired if they left the plant.”

He also said that after checking to make sure that everyone was out of the plant and grabbing important files, he was one of the last to leave the plant and escape. “To our knowledge, no one died while on company property,” he said.

He ends the video by saying that his company will cooperate fully with the reviews from the TBI and TOSHA and that the company’s focus is on its employees.

“Thank you for your hard work as we all try to recover from this tragedy,” O’Connor said. “I fell in love with Erwin and the people back in 1987 as a home for Impact Plastics. My plan is to build back our business in this town that I love as quickly as we can and offer good jobs to the people who live there.”

Former Impact Plastics employee Robert Jarvis said that he’s not happy with the company’s version of events.

“I wish he would take some accountability for his actions because we shouldn’t have been there that day at all,” Jarvis said. “It hurt me to see him up there trying to make himself look like he’s all innocent.”

Head over to Disaster.news to read more updates on the government’s disaster relief efforts, if there are any.