His wife was washed away at Impact Plastics and life will never be the same

Jerry Barnett doesn’t really care for elephants, but his living room is full of miniature figurines of the animals he can’t bring himself to move. They’re on his coffee table and the shelf by the door, their curly trunks pointing up.

They belonged to Sibrina, his wife and partner for nearly four decades, who died outside of Impact Plastics in Erwin on Sept. 27, swept off the back of a semitruck trailer during the catastrophic flooding brought by Hurricane Helene.

It’s not just elephants. Sibrina’s clothes are still on the bed, the ones she had laid out the morning he saw her for the last time. Her makeup is on the bathroom counter, her shampoo in the shower.

Jerry can’t move any of it.

“Eventually I’ll probably get to the point where I can change things around. ... But for now, I’m just content on leaving this stuff here.

"I guess it gets better, as far as that, but right now it’s staying where it is.”

'The only one' – Jerry Barnett recalls life with his wife, Sibrina

The two met as teenagers down the road in Jonesborough. Sibrina was 16 and new to town while Jerry was 19 and freshly out of school. She had been dating one of Jerry’s friends, but that relationship “went way south,” and Jerry pursued a romance with her.

For the next 37 years, they rarely left each other’s side. They married shortly after their son, Caimen, now 21, was born, in a brief ceremony in Gatlinburg.

“She was kind of the only one,” he said.

Sibrina was a “workaholic” who took pride in her job and in spoiling Jerry and Caimen. She did contract janitorial work for her stepsister’s cleaning company in Jonesborough, working at different businesses from 8 a.m. until 3:30 p.m., then headed out after to clean Ashley Academy in Johnson City, where she worked roughly 11 years, until at least 8 p.m.

“Once she started making a little money, then she was determined to make sure that Caimen, our son, had everything she didn’t growing up,” Jerry said. “She didn’t want him growing up with anything kind of secondhand-type like she had to.

“I just let her run with it because I didn’t mind it,” he said, laughing. “It made us closer because she really felt that we depended on her and stuff. … She liked that and took that role to heart.”

The couple prioritized their time together and were content at home, sharing time on the couch.

“It’s about as simple as you can get as far as a lifestyle and everything,” he said.

Ramona Harr, Ashley Academy’s leader, got to know Sibrina well over the years and said she was a tireless worker who always gave her best. She would even redo others’ work even though she was never asked to do it. She took pride in her work and was a model for her peers, Harr said.

“Sometimes the people who just do the things behind the scenes and work really hard, people don’t take notice of them and they just do their job,” she said. “Sometimes we don’t say thank you enough and acknowledge their work. … Sibrina was just one of those people. She just did it and did the right thing for her to do.”

Sibrina Barnett's last day at Impact Plastics

Sibrina worked at Impact Plastics only on Fridays as part of her normal rotation.

Whenever she was working, she was in the zone, Jerry said. She would often lock her phone in the business’ janitorial closet with the rest of her things and put her head down to get the job done − the fewer distractions the better.

She didn’t stand around and if she did take a moment to chat, Harr said, she would be sweeping while she did it.

Jerry thinks her determination and work ethic is partly why she stayed at Impact Plastics as long as she did when the flooding came Sept. 27. That, and nobody else was leaving.

“I guarantee it. Because she had a decent relationship with them, say they liked her a lot and wouldn't have nobody else, so she wouldn't walk out with kind of a half-done job or anything,” he said. “It would (have) just tied her up.”

When Jerry spoke with her that morning, Sibrina didn’t sound overly concerned about the rain. She was more annoyed the floods were messing up her schedule, he said. She couldn’t have known what was coming from the nearby Nolichucky River.

“She was just calm and nothing excited or out of ordinary or anything,” he said. “I had no idea what that river was doing and neither did she have any clue what was coming or how fast it was going to do what it did. … I had no worries and wasn’t thinking anything any different.”

Eventually, though, the water outside Impact Plastics got to a “worrisome point” and Jerry left his job to drive his pickup truck to get her, knowing she was afraid of driving in poor weather.

He couldn’t get to her. By then, police had shut down Interstate 26 at exit 37 near Impact Plastics. The roads in Erwin were too jammed with cars to get anywhere near the plant.

He called Sibrina, who told him to head back to work, that she’d see him later when the weather calmed down.

Jerry won’t bring himself to think about what happened next. He can’t.

Uncontrollable water, unbelievable loss

By the time Sibrina walked out of Impact Plastics, it was too late to escape, Jerry said. The floodwaters were up to the bottom of the doors of her Hyundai Sonata. Her car was one of the first to float away.

Instead, Sibrina was one of at least 10 Impact Plastics employees who took refuge on the back of a semitruck trailer from PolyPipe USA next door. The tall wheels and flatbed made for a seemingly safe place to rest until help could arrive.

But over an hour later, the truck was inundated with water before it eventually flipped, sweeping away the employees.

Sibrina and five others did not survive.

Several employees said managers wouldn’t allow them to leave until it was too late, a charge the company has denied. Both the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration have launched investigations into the business.

It wasn’t until her boss called him late in the afternoon that Jerry learned Sibrina was missing. It would be another eight days before he got confirmation what he knew instantly in that moment: He would never see her again.

“When (Sibrina’s boss) said she got thrown into the water and was missing, it don’t take a lot of common sense to put that together. That and she wasn’t a very good swimmer at all."

"I hate to even … think what she was going through,” he said as his voice trailed off, choked with tears.

It haunts him that he didn't get to say goodbye.

“If I had a premonition or had known what was coming or something I would have had the chance, but I didn’t get to end it the way anybody would have liked to,” he said.

Life goes on for Sibrina Barnett's survivors

Life now looks different − it will always look different. Jerry is trying to figure it out each day. If someone sees him smiling, it doesn't mean things are getting better. Not yet.

“They don’t see me in the morning. They don’t see me in my truck bawling my eyes out over something that was said or seen or anything like that,” he said. “That part I keep to myself for my job and for my son and kind of for myself, to try and get to the point where maybe I won’t wake up one morning (upset) and I can wake up and it be a half-decent day or something like that.”

His son, Caimen, has begun to open up, spending more time outside his room and going out with friends. Family members have been coming by to check on the two men to lift their spirits. The family is working with an attorney and plans to sue Impact Plastics.

Jerry can’t tell you what’s next, but he has the memories of a lifetime together with Sibrina and he’s thankful they met 37 years ago. That’s enough for now.

“Yeah, lucky for me because she was a good one, and sometimes they’re hard to find.”

Tyler Whetstone is an investigative reporter focused on accountability journalism. Connect with Tyler by emailing him at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @tyler_whetstone.