Hamlet N.C. -- When the screaming started, Carolyn Rainwater was 'stripping tenders,' pulling ribbons of white meat off chicken breasts for processing. When the screaming grew louder, she looked up and saw the smoke.

'It was the blackest smoke I had ever seen in my life,' said the 50 year-old grandmother, one of the few workers t oescape serious injury when deadly smoke from a flash fire raced through the Imperial Foods Co. plant Tuesday morning.

Twenty-five people were killed, 49 were injured.

The boundary of life and death was set by the billowing wall of toxic smoke. Those who worked in the front of the building were able to escape through a main entrance. Those in the back were trapped between the poisonous fumes and doors locked, employees say, to prevent pilferage. The smoke created panic, then chaos. It chased some workers into room-size coolers where they froze. It smothered others as they groped, gasping in the dark for escape. Friends and co-workers died together in clumps on the factory floor.

'In a fire of theis nature people congregate together out of fear,' said Hamlet Fire Chief David Fuller. 'That's where they died.'

There were 90 workers in Tuesday's 7 a.m. shift at Imperial Foods, a 30,000 square-foot collection of separate adjoining structures surrounded by a red brick facade. Once an ice cream factory, Imperial Foods now produces nuggets and other chicken products for Shoney's, Wendy's and other fast food restaurants.

Workers and fire officials say the plant was a maze of large rooms separated by moveable walls. Workers and their product moved through the plant, from front to the rear, as the chicken was cut, cleaned, cooked and packaged, then finally frozen.

Doors in the rear of the plant were locked, workers said. Employees say the management had complained someone was stealing chicken. Some workers were troubled by locked doors, but with jobs, even with those paying $5.50 an hour, a commodity in this small community, no one mentioned their fears.

'People didn't raise them because they were afraid they might lose their jobs,' said Elaine Griffin, a worker who escaped out the front door.

Sometime after 8 a.m., a hydraulic line ruptured spewing cooking oil into flames heating a 26 foot-long fat fryer in the middle of the plant.

Fuller said soaring flames ignited insulating material in the roof, adding more toxic fumes to the oil smoke.

The smoke spread quickly, blocking the way to the front exit. Fuller said one survivor told him he was engulfed by the smoke as he ran full speed to the rear of the plant.

Rainwater found herself a member of a panicked mob running to a back door as the lights went out. Rainwater ran to a loading dock blocked by a tractor-trailer; she and two others went into the trailer and started pounding on the walls. Before someone finally moved the truck, others in the crowd panicked.

Fuller said several employees sought sanctuary behind the heavy metal doors of two huge flash freezers on both sides of the plant. Dressed for the warm Carolina summer day, they quickly froze in temperatures as low as minus 28 degrees.

Hamlet, N.C. -- Most of the 25 victims of a chicken processing plant fire died of smoke inhalation, the mayor said yesterday as authorities tried to determine how many exits were locked.

Most of the victims of Tuesday's blaze were single parents, officials said.

Would-be rescuers and survivors told of locked or blocked fire exit doors. A padlock was seen on a door with a sign saying 'Fire Door Do Not Block.'

But mayor Abbie Covington refused to confirm the reports of locked doors at the Imperial Food Products plant. State Labor Commissioner John Brooks, who arrived yesterday to lead a state investigation, said it could be two monts before his department could issue a report on any violations it might uncover.

'I don't ahve any evidence of doors being locked,' Covington said. 'If we determine that doors were locked, I'm sure there will be some sense of outrage, but I'm not in a position to reach that conclusion. To be angry at somebody won't do any good at this point.'

Firefighters were bieng questioned 'to find out exactly what they found when they got to the building,' Covington said.

If doors were locked while people were in the building, violators could be subject to fines and, because deaths were involved, possible criminal prosecution,' Brooks said.

He said it would be up to the local prosecutor to decide if other charges, possibly including manslaughter, might be filed.

The fire -- the state's worst industrial accident -- erupted when a hydraulic line ruptured near a 26 foot-long deep-fat fryer and the spilled fluid caught fire, said Charles Dunn, deputy director of The State Bureau of Investigation.

There was no sprinkler system at the plant. A fire extinguisher was installed above the fryer after a 1983 non-fatal blaze, Fuller said. The extinguisher was supposed to go off automatically, but Fuller said he didn't know if it worked Tuesday.

The following articles are both from Time Magazine.

FINED. Imperial Food Products, Atlanta-based owner of a chicken-processing plant in Hamlet, N.C., where 25 workers died in a fire last September; in Raleigh. The state of North Carolina levied $808,150 in penalties for violations including locked exit doors and inadequate emergency lighting. The state had never inspected the plant in its 11 years of operation. While a record for North Carolina, the fine was small compared with multimillion-dollar federal fines for industrial accidents. With federal approval, the state administers its own plant-safety program.

Time, January 13, 1992, p. 50.

Time, September 28, 1992, p. 24.