Grief-stricken Mexican immigrant families ask questions after factory workers are swept away by Helene

ERWIN, Tenn. (AP) — With shaking hands, Daniel Delgado kissed a photo of his wife, Monica Hernandez, before lighting a candle in a supermarket parking lot. Family members hugged pictures printed on a billboard and some broke down crying as search helicopters flew overhead toward the hills.

Days after six workers at a plastics factory disappeared in the tsunami Hurricane HeleneRelatives and supporters have gathered at vigils outside churches, a high school and a grocery store to honor her.

Most evenings, prayers are said in Spanish over rosaries: “Mary, mother of Jesus, ask for intercession and help us find her.”

The storm that claimed lives at least 227 people The six-state disaster quickly swept through Erwin, an Appalachian town of about 6,000 people, on Sept. 27 and led to more than 50 people being rescued by helicopter from the roof of a flooded hospital.

The scar it left was particularly devastating in the small Latino community that disproportionately makes up the factory’s workers: Four of the six workers swept away were Mexican Americans.

Two government investigations have been launched into Impact Plastics, examining whether the company should have done more to protect workers as the danger grew.

The families of those who died say they still cannot understand the severity of the storm – or why their loved ones did not leave the factory sooner to avoid the raging floodwaters.

“We ask: Why? Why did she go to work? Why did she stay?” That’s what Hernandez’s sister Guadalupe Hernandez-Corona said through a translator after a vigil on Thursday evening. “We’re all still wondering.”

Gerald O’Connor, president of Impact Plastics, said no employees were forced to continue working and that they were evacuated at least 45 minutes before the massive force of flooding hit the industrial park.

“It was time to escape,” he said in a video statement, adding that he was among the last to leave the plant after making sure everyone was out. The National Guard rescued five employees by helicopter.

But surviving workers say the evacuation began too late. Some clung to pipes in the bed of trucks for up to six hours as they frantically called 911 and said goodbye to loved ones. Some saw colleagues being swept away by the current.

Emergency dispatchers said resources were scarce as a rescue operation was underway more than a mile downstream at Unicoi County Hospital.

Typically 2 feet (about 60 centimeters) deep, the Nolichucky River rose to a record height of 30 feet (9.1 meters) that day and flowed at more than 1.4 million gallons (5.3 million liters) per second, which is twice as much as Niagara Falls.

The plastics factory was open even when local schools were closed. Robert Jarvis, who began his shift at 7 a.m., said employees continued to work while receiving telephone alerts about possible flooding. Many stayed even after management asked them to move the cars because six inches of water had accumulated in the parking lot.

Employees were eventually told to evacuate the building after the power went out and the water was about a foot deep, he said. Jarvis said he only survived because he was pulled into the back of a lifted truck that drove up a dirt road for three hours.

Jarvis said the six lost colleagues were “like family” and he felt an obligation to them to share his experiences.

“You shouldn’t have been at work that day,” he said. “None of us should have done that.”

Annabel Andrade, whose cousin’s daughter Rosy Reynoso is still missing, said evacuation routes were inadequate. And O’Connor’s statement angered her: “He left for sure. Why was he able to save himself and abandon these other employees?”

Alma Vazquez, a Catholic Charities case manager who met some of the lost workers decades ago after first finding a home at a migrant farm camp in Erwin, said the deaths were “totally preventable.”

“People didn’t have to die in the place where they work,” she said.

Many of the victims had a close bond with Erwin. According to the Census Bureau, it is more than 90% white, with about 8% of the population, about 500 people, identifying as Hispanic in 2022, up from 3.8% a decade earlier.

Lidia Verdugo, Bertha Mendoza and Hernandez, all Mexican Americans, lived in the community for two decades. Hernandez began working at Impact Plastics shortly after she arrived, her sister said.

The most recent addition to Erwin was 29-year-old Rosy Reynoso eight years ago. She and her husband had just moved into their own apartment after living with her mother, who still visited her daily. Her 10-year-old son is in Mexico and she is working on getting him here, Andrade said.

Two white plastics workers, Sibrina Barnett and Johnny Peterson, were also swept away.

There was frustration in the Hispanic community that state officials did not immediately send translators to help disaster survivors, and families were even more upset when workers answering phone lines for missing person tips spoke only English.

When a Tennessee Emergency Management Agency director was asked why these resources were not available until more than a day after the search began, he said they were unaware of the size of the area’s Spanish-speaking population.

“It was very heartbreaking for them to hear that,” said Ana Gutierrez, an organizer with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, which supports families.

Gutierrez also said the families felt their plight had been overshadowed by the hospital rescue, which made headlines the same day, while the factory workers did not.

Some comfort was provided by the nightly vigils, where people prayed in both Spanish and English and lit candles while the workers’ names were read out.

Erwin Mayor Glenn White said he was moved to see the crowd, a mix of Hispanic and white residents, coming together in solidarity and mourning.

“We are one people. Our country’s motto is, ‘Out of many comes one,'” White said.

At Saint Michael The Archangel, where the vast majority of the 225 parishioners are Hispanic, families gathered to comfort each other and eat Mexican pozole while donations of water, food and other supplies were delivered.

Andrade’s family was one of the first Hispanic families to settle in Erwin in the 1980s. When her 19-year-old son died in 2017, she was the first in the community to lay a family member to rest here in the cemetery next to Saint Michael, rather than sending the body back to Mexico for burial.

Reynoso’s husband, who still hopes her body will be found, initially planned to bury her in Mexico, but later decided that if her body was found, it would remain in Tennessee. “You’ve built a life here – your family will be here,” Andrade told him. “This is your home.”

Engraved Spanish prayers adorn the cemetery’s headstones, which Andrade sees as a symbol of the life of Hispanic immigrants in America.

“It’s a way to keep them with us,” she said.

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Associated Press journalists Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this report.