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

More than a week after workers fled flooding outside their factory, much remains unclear, including how many died.

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, Tenn., Ms. Mendoza, her younger sister and a group their co-workers clung to the bed of a pickup trying to flee from the rising waters.

When the situation became dire, Ms. 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 her oldest son, 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,’” Mr. 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 incidents 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.