Private Failure
You may remember the emotional interview with Mr. Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, describing the head of his emergency management team talking to his mother in a nursing home as the waters were rising. The lady was in St. Rita’s Nursing Home in the town of Chalmette, and she drowned.
MSNBC reports that Louisiana nursing home owners charged in 34 deaths. The owners, Salvador A. Mangano and his wife, Mable, were charged with negligent homicide. Each count carries up to five years in prison.
They had been required to have an evacuation plan and demonstrate the ability to implement it. They had repeatedly been asked by authorities if they needed assistance to evacuate, and declined offers of help.
In an audio link on Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, Robert Siegel talks with The Washington Post‘s Doug Struck on the situation in that hospital and its failure to evacuate patients.
The owners of the hospital, Tenet HealthSystem Medical, Inc., acted surprised when Louisiana officials contacted them and asked them how they were going to evacuate their patients.
Over 40 bodies were recovered from Memorial.
Rook offers his riff on St. Rita, Court Costs, with a CNN link.
