Tennessee DA announces no charges in hurricane flooding deaths of workers

The owner of a plastics factory in Erwin, Tennessee, where six workers drowned in flooding from Hurricane Helene in 2024, won’t face charges after the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said it had found no criminal offenses.

First Judicial District Attorney General Steven Finney on Friday announced the decision to close the case, citing that the TBI 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 statement.

It also found employees had a little more than an hour during which they could have evacuated from the flooding industrial park. Earlier this year, the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration released the findings of its investigation, stating that workers had time to evacuate.

Impact Plastics attorney Stephen Ross Johnson on Friday told several news agencies the company welcomed the results of the TBI investigation.

According to news accounts, five employees and one contractor who cleaned the offices once a week were killed on Sept. 27, 2024. They were among a dozen people who stayed close to the Impact Plastics building, waiting for the water to recede, only after realizing the exit road was already submerged.