On Wednesday, a tornado damaged severely a Pfizer factory in North Carolina.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a tornado watch for a significant area of coastal North Carolina and southern Virginia on Wednesday morning.
An Enhance Fujima Scale-2 (EF2) tornado, which touched down slightly west of the anticipated warning zone near the village of Dortches at around 12.30 p.m., was confirmed by the NWS in Raleigh.
An EF2 tornado can sustain wind speeds of up to 135 miles per hour.
The tornado then traveled east towards the city of Rocky Mount. A survey conducted after the storm determined that the damage was consistent with an EF3 tornado, which can sustain wind speeds of up to 150 miles per hour.
Pfizer confirmed that their factory, located just 7 miles north of the city, was damaged by Wednesday’s twister.
Photos from the aftermath of the storm show the factory building devastated, as well as numerous semi-trailer trucks flipped over and damaged from the heavy winds.
‘I’ve got reports of 50,000 pallets of medicine that are strewn across the facility and damaged through the rain and the wind,’ Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone said.
According to the company, employees at the factory ‘followed established safety protocol’ and safely evacuated. They reported no deaths or injuries from the storm.
‘The city had to transport the employees to the Rocky Mount Senior Center,’ Rocky Mount Fire Chief Darvin Moore later confirmed at a press conference.
‘We are assessing the situation to determine the impact on production,’ Pfizer said in a statement ‘Our Thoughts are with our colleagues, our patients, and the community as we rebuild from this weather incident.’
The large plant produces anesthesia, as well as almost 25% of the company’s injectable drugs used in American hospitals.
The storm also caused damage to ‘numerous’ homes in the northern part of the city, Fire Chief Moore said at a press conference on Wednesday evening. Only two residents suffered injuries as a result of the damage.
‘We are relieved that the storm did not have any major loss or damage to life,’ Moore said.