The remains of a sixth factory worker in eastern Tennessee who was swept away in the flooding brought on by Hurricane Helene have been found, ending a search for what is believed to be the last missing employee more than a month after the storm tore through the Southeast.
Officials on Friday disclosed the identity of the body as Rosa Andrade, 29, one of a half-dozen victims of the flood who worked at Impact Plastics, a factory in the close-knit town of Erwin, about 120 miles east of Knoxville.
“These people were just reporting to work that morning,” Andrew Harris, a captain with Unicoi County Search and Rescue, said in an interview on Saturday. “We’re trying to provide closure for the families, and obviously grieving with them.”
The deluge at the factory on Sept. 27 was part of a trail of devastation caused by Helene, the Category 4 hurricane that hit the coast of Florida on Sept. 26 and decimated neighboring states with landslides and flooding in the days that followed. Helene killed more than 200 people across the Southeast.
In North Carolina alone, there were more than 100 storm-related deaths, with damages and recovery efforts projected to cost the state an estimated $53 billion.
Although Ms. Andrade is thought to be the last missing person from the factory, Mr. Harris said that search and recovery efforts continue for victims from North Carolina, some of whom are believed to have been swept into Erwin and nearby counties. State officials from Tennessee and North Carolina have suggested that at least a dozen people overall remain unaccounted for in the two states.
Officials in Tennessee initially said that 11 workers at the factory, some of whom were immigrants, were missing, but five were later found alive.
Ms. Andrade’s husband, Francisco Javier Guerrero, told the local news station WBIR that he had last heard from his wife when she was still inside the factory.
“She said goodbye to me, and to take care of the kids,” he said, referring to their two small children.
It remains unclear what exactly happened at the plant on Sept. 27, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations and the state’s occupational safety board are still looking into the deaths.
Accounts from survivors and family members of the victims say that workers reported to the factory as usual that day.
Some workers said that as the downpour began, they were told not to leave the plant, despite their concerns about safety. Organizers with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, an immigrant rights group, said that the workers told them they “didn’t have evacuation instructions at all.” There were also reports of Spanish speakers trying, in vain, to communicate with English speakers during the chaotic evacuation.
Managers with Impact Plastics have rebutted those allegations, saying that the workers were never told they were required to stay during the storm. The company has also said that workers were told to evacuate as soon as the plant lost power that morning.
The industrial park where the factory is located was smothered by the floodwaters and became a wasteland of destroyed buildings, mud and trees with 200-year-old root clusters exposed. Debris piles were 30 feet tall, according to Mr. Harris, the rescue captain. Ms. Andrade was found under one of the piles on Wednesday, buried deep within the same debris from which remains of her co-workers had been recovered weeks earlier.
Also killed in the flood were Monica Hernandez, Johnny Peterson, Lidia Verdugo-Gastelum, Sibrina Barnett and Bertha Mendoza. Like Ms. Andrade, some of the other victims, including Ms. Mendoza, were able to get final messages out to their loved ones before they were swept away.
“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,’” Ms. Mendoza’s son, Guillermo Mendoza, told The Times shortly after her death. “I thank God that even in those last moments, my mom is in danger, and she still thinks about her children.”
Hundreds of people helped with efforts to find the victims, including canine search teams, the National Guard and response teams from North Carolina and other states.
“With it being a small community, we know these people,” Mr. Harris said. “It’s not like we’re recovering strangers.”
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