45 bodies recovered at hospital; death toll rises

[stormie_skies]

NEW ORLEANS — The bodies of 45 patients have been found at a flooded-out hospital, a state health official said today amid otherwise encouraging signs large and small that New Orleans is climbing back two weeks after it was slammed by Hurricane Katrina.

The bodies were found Sunday at 317-bed Memorial Medical Center, which was abandoned more than a week ago after it was surrounded by floodwaters, said Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals.

The Louisiana death toll rose to 279, up from 197 on Sunday, Johannesen said.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3349950

[Lindaloo]

Was this the elderly facility? I am just appalled at this.

[weatherSnoop]

It was a metropolitan public hospital. Right now they are assuming the souls had left prior to the evacuation of the hospital, but autopsies will be performed to insure they passed naturally rather than drown. As cold as it sounds, I am sure all of the care-givers in this facility did all the could to save everyone. The greater dis-service are the 34 found drowned in a nursing home. It was part of the "plan" for the nursing homes to be able to evacuate their residents. But the plan went out the window late Friday night/Saturday morning (so it seems to me).

[HurricaneBill]

From what I've read, it was the heat that killed many of them while they waited to be evacuated from the hospital. They were stuck there for a few days and with no power or air conditioning, the temperature in the hospital rose.

Medical staff was at the hospital, of course!

[Windy]

It's also possible that the people who died died from lack of life-support when the generators were swamped by water and the power went out. I know there was one New Orleans hospital where this was the case. They ended up stacking the bodies in a stairwell because the basement morgue was under water.

[GalvestonDuck]

It's also possible that the people who died died from lack of life-support when the generators were swamped by water and the power went out. I know there was one New Orleans hospital where this was the case. They ended up stacking the bodies in a stairwell because the basement morgue was under water.

If that's the case, that hospital seriously needs to reconsider their emergency procedures.

Our policy is to evacuate and/or aid in the evacuation of all patients who it is medically possible to discharge. All other patients are moved to as few patient care areas as possible so that patient care is most efficient with the minimum staff. Equipment and supplies are moved also (oxygen tanks -- big necessity) to the patient care areas at higher levels.

Unless this was a two-story rural hospital and not a major medical center, I can't imagine how or why they wouldn't vertically evacuate inpatients.

[Windy]

It's also possible that the people who died died from lack of life-support when the generators were swamped by water and the power went out. I know there was one New Orleans hospital where this was the case. They ended up stacking the bodies in a stairwell because the basement morgue was under water.

If that's the case, that hospital seriously needs to reconsider their emergency procedures.

Our policy is to evacuate and/or aid in the evacuation of all patients who it is medically possible to discharge. All other patients are moved to as few patient care areas as possible so that patient care is most efficient with the minimum staff. Equipment and supplies are moved also (oxygen tanks -- big necessity) to the patient care areas at higher levels.

Unless this was a two-story rural hospital and not a major medical center, I can't imagine how or why they wouldn't vertically evacuate inpatients.

Most of the patients they had left were all critical patients. They did vertically evacuate (it was a fairly tall hospital) and they did call to FEMA on day two for air evacs. No air evacs were provided until I think day 5 or day 6, and by then some of the most critical patients had expired. IIRC, the generators were on the second floor. There were no floodwaters until day 2, and then they rapidly came up as the levee failed. They ended up desperately calling CNN in the middle of the night (when their generators were still working) because nobody else would help them. Nobody did until around day 5 or 6. In the end, the nurses hand-ventilated patients and even had to give each other IVs to keep fluidated since there was no water and nobody would bring them any. Add to that the crazed drug addicts who laid seige to the building and had to be driven off by the SWAT team and you get an idea of what it was like. A lot of patients died, but I don't know what else the hospital could have done.

[GalvestonDuck]

Duh...my bad. If I'd read every word I bolded I would have noticed you were saying the generators were swamped, not the life-support equipment.

[simplykristi]

Charity Hospital was the one with all the problems. I had never heard of the probs at Memorial until after the evacs finally began.

Kristi