25 to 30 bodies in Nursing hom in St.Bernard Parish.

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

Local officials: Between 25 to 30 bodies have been found in a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans. Details to come.

Source front page of Cnn.

[LSU2001]

Yeah supposedly the staff ran out and left the patients there without any evac or care. Simply astounding and pitiful. I am sorry to say that this is only the first of many sad and horrifying stories to come from the area.
TIm

[soonertwister]

I read today about a dockside warehouse in Mississippi that was cut off by the storm, where 100 people waited to be rescued. No one came and they died. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information. I think I read that at NOLA.com, but it could have been elsewhere. There will be a lot of stories like these, I'm afraid.

[mf_dolphin]

Yeah supposedly the staff ran out and left the patients there without any evac or care. Simply astounding and pitiful. I am sorry to say that this is only the first of many sad and horrifying stories to come from the area.
TIm

If that's true I hope they are tracked down and charged with criminal negligence.

[jkt21787]

CNN now reporting the sherriff in St. Bernard is confirming now 30+ bodies in that nursing home.

[LSU2001]

Yeah supposedly the staff ran out and left the patients there without any evac or care. Simply astounding and pitiful. I am sorry to say that this is only the first of many sad and horrifying stories to come from the area.
TIm

If that's true I hope they are tracked down and charged with criminal negligence.

Me too Mf dolphin, That is why I said supposedly. I cannot verify that part of the story.
Tim

[mf_dolphin]

I understand. That's why I qualified my answer as well. It's a tragedy no matter how it happened.

[simplykristi]

Yeah supposedly the staff ran out and left the patients there without any evac or care. Simply astounding and pitiful. I am sorry to say that this is only the first of many sad and horrifying stories to come from the area.
TIm

If that's true I hope they are tracked down and charged with criminal negligence.

Me too!

Kristi

[artist]

according to the states plan those in charge of nursing homes, etc. were to have filed a plan stating how they would move the patients to safety and where or they would not recieve a license from the state. Will be interesting to see if they did.


this whole thing is only going to get worse. I just hope we can all handle it as more becomes known of how some died.

[AlabamaDave]

The reported 100 deaths of rescued indviduals occurred in Chalmette, LA, also in St. Bernard Parish.

The nursing home story has been around on local St. Bernard boards for at least a couple of days. It's taking the media a really long time to notice St. Bernard and the horrible tragedy that has occurred there.

My wife's Uncle and his family rode out the storm there and are lucky to be alive. The made it into a boat as the water started pouring in. This was while the storm was still in progress. He said the water rose from zero to approx. 15 feet within a matter of minutes (the roof of the house they were staying in was completely covered). Their boat capsized due to 4-foot waves, and another boat just happened to pass by and pull them in -- otherwise the entire family would have drowned.

[soonertwister]

The reported 100 deaths of rescued indviduals occurred in Chalmette, LA, also in St. Bernard Parish.

The nursing home story has been around on local St. Bernard boards for at least a couple of days. It's taking the media a really long time to notice St. Bernard and the horrible tragedy that has occurred there.

My wife's Uncle and his family rode out the storm there and are lucky to be alive. The made it into a boat as the water started pouring in. This was while the storm was still in progress. He said the water rose from zero to approx. 15 feet within a matter of minutes (the roof of the house they were staying in was completely covered). Their boat capsized due to 4-foot waves, and another boat just happened to pass by and pull them in -- otherwise the entire family would have drowned.

Thanks, Dave. I just found out about that myself after a little research. I swear that the original article I saw said it was in Mississippi. Apparently there were over one thousand people waiting to be ferried after being rescued in Chalmette, but 100 perished before they could be helped.

A lot of hard questions are going to need answers when all is said and done, and sadly, I think failures probably come up and down the food chain. NOLA got so much attention, but it appears that for the number of people involved, the casualties were much more severe just to the east of there. Unfortunately, we may never know whether or not the media obsession with the plight of New Orleans had a factor in this. It's just tragic, and the news is only going to get worse.

[bfez1]

Yeah supposedly the staff ran out and left the patients there without any evac or care. Simply astounding and pitiful. I am sorry to say that this is only the first of many sad and horrifying stories to come from the area.
TIm

If that's true I hope they are tracked down and charged with criminal negligence.

The admin of that nursing home should be jailed and charged with murder. They should have had an evacuation plan in place for times like these. No excuse for this terrible tragedy to have happened. It's called NEGLECT!!!

[soonertwister]

I've already read of several care facilities that were abandoned, with those in their care left to die. I'd rather die with them than to live the rest of my life knowing what I had done.

[CajunMama]

Was this the nursing home that the Jefferson Parish President's mother was at? I don't know if any of you saw that video clip on the news where he talked about his mother calling and calling and he kept telling her help was on the way. Only the help he requested never showed up and she passed away.

[Skywatch_NC]

Was this the nursing home that the Jefferson Parish President's mother was at? I don't know if any of you saw that video clip on the news where he talked about his mother calling and calling and he kept telling her help was on the way. Only the help he requested never showed up and she passed away.

Do all LA parishes have presidents?

So VERY sad and it angers me, too, about those left abandoned in these rest homes like a captain and crew leaving a sinking ship before passengers are taken care of first!!

[Lori]

I saw the clip...very heartbreaking
I think the Jefferson Parish President was talking about the EOC manager's mother called him Tueday,Wednesday, Thursday
Each time the manager told his Mother "were coming Mama, were coming Mama". She was found dead on Saturday.

[CajunMama]

That's the clip I was talking about Lori...just heartbreaking.

Eric, the parish president is like a mayor.

[Skywatch_NC]

That's the clip I was talking about Lori...just heartbreaking.

Eric, the parish president is like a mayor.

Okay, thank you, Kathy.

[Shoshana]

Warning: This article is graphic.






From the Dallas Morning News

Nursing home didn't evacuate

'The worst thing I've ever seen'

12:14 AM CDT on Thursday, September 8, 2005

By KAREN BROOKS / The Dallas Morning News

CHALMETTE, La. – When St. Bernard Parish officials realized last week that St. Rita's Nursing Home had not evacuated as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the parish, they called to ask why. Their offer to send buses to help was turned down, they said Wednesday.

No one knows for sure why officials of St. Rita's, a privately owned nursing home, chose not to evacuate. On Wednesday, officials were still unsure of the number of people who died there, but previous estimates put the toll at 30 or more.

"This is the worst thing I've ever seen, and I drug bodies to the levee after Hurricane Betsy," said 60-year-old Raymond Couture, one of the rescuers searching St. Rita's this week.

This suburban parish a few miles from downtown New Orleans was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding. Officials have estimated that the parish's death toll may reach 500.

Details of what happened at the facility are still sketchy, but the descriptions of what's inside the single-story, football-field-size building horrify even hardened disaster veterans.

The body of one elderly woman, clothed in a thin housedress, was on the concrete floor of the front patio. The thin, bony body of an old man was draped over the back of a chair, where the receding waters left it. A blackened hand was sticking out from between a gurney and collapsed wall.

At least some of the bodies remained in the nursing home Wednesday because the water outside the facility had been too high for workers to bring in vehicles to remove them.

Tables had been nailed against windows and wheelchairs had been piled up in an apparent effort to keep the water out, rescue workers said.

The smell of rotting human flesh clung to clothing of searchers going through the building. The high water mark reached a foot shy of the ceiling. Six inches of sewage, mud and putrefied tissue coated the floor in a slippery, dark brown scum strewn with broken furniture, bodies and wheelchairs.

Behind each door along the darkened hallway was a nightmare scene. Bodies were found in some of the rooms. Searchers couldn't get in other rooms because doors were blocked by tangled heaps of furniture and bodies. The cursory body count was 15, with more believed there. The searchers were fearful of falling into the muck.

Outside, debris covered the roof of a Hummer sport utility vehicle, which local officials say belonged to a staffer.

Parish officials were still trying to piece together what happened.

St. Rita's had the required evacuation plan: Ambulances would be called to take bedridden patients away, and the others would be evacuated by school buses. At least 60 patients and six staffers may have been in the building when Katrina hit.

Parish coroner Dr. Bryan Bertucci said several of the parish's other nursing homes evacuated during the weekend, but St. Rita's staffers never put their plan into effect.

Sunday afternoon, Dr. Bertucci said, he checked with St. Rita's staff to see why. He said the owner, Mabel Mangano, told him she had five special-needs patients, and an ambulance hadn't come to pick them up. Officials said she also told them that she had spoken with the families of patients who said it was okay to stay behind.

"There was frustration over not having her patients out; a false sense of security because they'd never flooded before; they had generators and stuff, and it [an evacuation] tends to be traumatic for some of these special-needs patients," Dr. Bertucci said.

"She asked me if we were upset," Dr. Bertucci said. "I said I'm not on the council, I'm concerned about the patients."

Dr. Bertucci said he told Ms. Mangano, " 'We've got two buses and two drivers that'll take you anywhere you want to go. Do you want the buses?'

"She said no."

Ms. Mangano is believed to have stayed with the patients, since no one has heard from her since the storm. Attempts to reach members of her family or relatives of nursing home residents were unsuccessful.

When water started rising quickly – about eight feet in 15 minutes, according to one official – shortly after the hurricane passed though the area Monday, a handful of nearby residents went to the facility and tried to rescue patients. Lowery Ingargolio, director of emergency preparedness, said the residents knew that St. Rita's hadn't been evacuated.

Because parish officials were busy trying to shore up a shelter elsewhere, residents started rushing to St. Rita's to get the residents out. With staff members, the residents floated some of the patients – about 20 – out on mattresses to a nearby school, but "they stopped rescuing people when the water got up to the door frame," said Henry Rodriguez Jr., parish president. "They couldn't get anybody out after that."

One of those brought out of St. Rita's died on the way to the school, two died at the school and a fourth died later in the hospital, officials said.

Mr. Rodriguez said the district attorney's office should convene a grand jury to investigate what happened at St. Rita's.

When Dr. Bertucci, who has witnessed horror after horror during the last week of hurricane madness, heard what had happened at St. Rita's, he said, "That's probably the first time I cried."

Staff writers Diane Jennings and Chuck Stewart, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and Bloomberg News Service contributed to this report.

[GalvestonDuck]

I looked up St. Rita's on the JCAHO site and it's not even an accredited facility. http://www.jcaho.org/qualitycheck/direc ... 0&s=-1&st=