Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Working a hurricane at 317-bed Baptist meant bringing along kids, parents and grandparents, dogs, cats and rabbits, and coolers and grocery bags packed with party chips, cheese dip, and muffulettas. You’d probably show up even if you weren’t on duty.”

New Orleans often suffers from hurricanes, and Memorial hospital has a longstanding reputation as a big, safe place for shelter. Hundreds of staff and hundreds more of their relatives and friends arrive at the hospital, prepared to hunker down, get through the storm, and return home. During Hurricane Katrina, however, the big, safe place becomes a trap and, for some, a tomb.

“Some doctors would later say the sight of the water advancing toward the hospital, pushing the hurricane debris ahead of it, was like something out of a movie: a glob of murderous slime from a ’60s sci-fi thriller, or the mist-cloaked Angel of Death wafting down Egyptian streets to envelop the homes of firstborn sons in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.”

Disasters kick the crutches out from our cherished beliefs about the continuity of normal life. When we face sudden existential threats, the normal can seem haunted, and the unusual, terrifying. The sight of waters slowly inundating streets brings upon the watchers a sense of doom.

“Those in fairly good health who could sit up or walk would be categorized as ‘1’s and prioritized first for evacuation. Those who were sicker and would need more assistance were ‘2’s. A final group of patients were assigned ‘3’s and were slated to be evacuated last. That group included those whom doctors judged to be very ill and also, as doctors had agreed on Tuesday, those with DNR orders.”

The evacuation triage system settled on by the doctors contains an unusual and controversial element: the most critical patients, usually cared for first, will, in this instance, be helped last. The reasoning is that they are too fragile and likely to die en route, thus wasting a precious seat on scarce rescue vehicles.