Underlying the official response to the crisis was a lack of situational awareness—a view of the larger picture of what was happening and what needed to be done. All of this had occurred against the backdrop of the knowledge, for years, that exactly such a scenario could occur. The Times-Picayune had written about it. The Hurricane Pam exercises had modeled it. The hospital was a microcosm of these larger failures, with compromised physical infrastructure, compromised operating systems, and compromised individuals. And also instances of heroism.
