HAMLET, NC (WBTV) – For firefighters in Hamlet, North Carolina, frantic dispatches on the morning of Sept. 3, 1991 were anything but typical.
The May Day call for the burning Imperial Foods Plant still rings in Chief Calvin White’s psyche, he told WBTV’s Steve Crump in 2016 — 25 years after the tragedy. White was a captain at the time, and his truck was the first to arrive at the plant in Hamlet, which is about 80 miles southeast from the heart of Charlotte.
“I called for every fire department and every rescue squad in the county,” White said. “I had to move those souls, those precious individuals, twice that day.”
Years later, the aftermath has been hard to shake for those who survived the accidental grease fire at the plant, where they processed fried chicken. At the time, workers inside the plant were trapped by locked doors, many unable to escape the blaze.
On that day in 1991, 25 people were killed and 54 people were injured in the fire.
Chief White said in 2016 that the locked doors were the “very reason people died in that fire.” White said then that he still wrestles with the “disregard for life” carried out by the owners and operators of Imperial Food Products.
The tragedy prompted a demand for improved workplace safety — especially after the state said that the plant had never been visited by workplace safety inspectors, despite being open for 11 years.
Business owner Emmett Roe served four years of a 19-year sentence in connection with the 25 deaths at the plant. Prosecutors maintain that Roe intentionally requested the plant’s doors remain locked to prevent chicken theft.
—> Related: Imperial Food Products fire survivors recall horrors from 25 years ago
One employee, Bobby Quick, was able to kick through one of the many locked doors that day. He helped several fellow employees find safety, but he ended up injuring his spine in “several places,” he said.
Another employee told WBTV that the trauma she experienced has caused significant nightmares, sending her to a mental health facility more than once.
First responders faced many challenges that day, too, including separating their work from their personal feelings. Former Hamlet police Chief Scott Waters told us in 2016 that his mother worked in the plant, and was “laid out in the street” when he arrived at the scene. He was working as a member of the local rescue squad.
“A lady got me and she grabbed my hand, and she carried me to where my mom was at,” Waters said in 2016. “[My mom] was laid out on the street, and there was a number of people around her.”
Waters said his mother still struggled with health-related issues in the decades following the fire.
—> More: Hamlet first responders recall horrors of Imperial Foods fire 25 years later
Now, the site of the former plant serves as a community park and a memorial.
This article was originally published by a www.wbtv.com . Read the Original article here. .