Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

by Sheri Fink

Why, in the end, had more than a thousand died immediately in New Orleans—many of them in medical facilities, and many others poor and elderly—and an unknown number of others suffered and died in the aftermath due to stress and disruption of health care? So many reasons. The mayor’s delayed evacuation order. The lack of buses and drivers to move people out of town who had no cars of their own. Stubborn decisions to stay by people with the means to leave. Uncoordinated rescue efforts. Confusion and turf battles between different agencies and levels of government. Poor communications, not interoperable. Hospitals and nursing homes that didn’t evacuate before the storm and had not invested in backup power systems and backup water systems robust enough to withstand a prolonged emergency. Alarm over lawlessness, which interrupted rescues. It soon became clear that the fear of violence outweighed the actual violence, and that fear itself had compounded tragedy, as when first responders, including medical workers at the Superdome, were instructed to abandon their posts and their patients out of concern for their own safety.