‘LIKE A BOMB WENT OFF’

Pfizer Pharmaceutical Plant Damaged by Tornado in North Carolina

No serious injuries were reported as a result of the twister, which destroyed trees and downed power lines elsewhere in Nash County.

A tornado that touched down in North Carolina on Wednesday afternoon ripped through a Pfizer pharmaceutical plant, heavily damaging the facility and violently tossing about the medicine inside. No reports of serious injuries at the plant were immediately made, the company said in an email confirming the incident to the Associated Press. “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. A Pfizer employee told local station WTVD that the storm had passed over the facility in just over a minute, and that it had sounded “like a bomb went off.” Pfizer is one of the largest employers in the county. The National Weather Service’s Raleigh office estimated that the twister, which damaged several other homes and left downed trees and power lines in its wake, was consistent with an EF3 tornado with indicated winds of up to 150 miles per hour.