They Chose Poorly

This is a story I've been following for quite some time. The running meme was that people died in Louisiana because the federal government failed to act and that the fault lies exclusively with FEMA and the President (once he got rid of Mike Brown). Well, as more information comes out about the roles played by the various state and local officials, a completely different picture has emerged.

State and local officials turned down assistance from the feds to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes.

A ranking Louisiana health official turned down federal offers to help move or evacuate patients as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, a newly released document shows.
But the state's top medical officer said Louisiana coordinated with the federal Health and Human Services Department in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes after Katrina hit.

Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina.

The state official, identified in the Aug. 27 e-mail as Dr. Roseanne Pratts, "responded no, that they do not require anything at this time and they would be in touch if and when they needed assistance," wrote HHS senior policy analyst Erin Fowler.

In one instance, at St. Rita's Nursing Home, the owners failed to evacuate 34 patients from rising floodwaters and were killed by the flooding/storm surge. The owners, Salvador and Mable Mangano, were charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide. The Attorney General's office has continued investigating other cases at nursing homes and hospitals where staff and owners failed to take reasonable precautions and put patients at risk or patients died under suspicious conditions.

One has to wonder whether the state and local officials took the threats posed by the approaching massive hurricane seriously enough to act prudently and responsibly. While hindsight is 20/20, one has to wonder how anyone would permit nursing homes and hospitals to decide for themselves whether to evacuate from low lying areas ahead of an approaching severe hurricane? The flipside, of course, can be seen from the evacuation ahead of the approaching hurricane Rita, where a group of senior citizens were killed when their bus caught fire and oxygen canisters exploded as it was evacuating the group from the coastline.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; hurricane rita; katrina aid; new orleans, rita, galveston, lake charles, levee; levee breach.