45 Bodies Found at New Orleans Hospital

[spinbaby]

NEW ORLEANS - Forty-five bodies have been found at a hospital that was abandoned more than a week ago after it was surrounded by floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, a state health official said Monday.


The bodies were located Sunday at Memorial Medical Center, said Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals. Johannesen said the bodies were those of patients, but he had no other information.

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

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050912/ap_on_re_us/katrina_bodies

[sabra]

1. heck of job, Brownie, heck of a job!

[etherealtruth]

4. Yeah , but he resigned so everything is OK

:sarcasm:

Browns incompetence rises to the level of a crime against humanity.

[sabra]

5. will you please stop playing that game, what's it called?

oh yeah, "the blame game"

:sarcasm:

[tavalon]

30. Blame game = Accountability

But I'm preaching to the choir here, I know.

[burythehatchet]

2. FEMA correction -

that's actually 4 point 5 bodies found...

[htuttle]

11. ...As FEMA's "official death count" in New Orleans rises to eleven.

[Inland]

3. Not just the hospital was abandoned. The people were also.

Anyone for a metaphor for the Bush administration's ideology?

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. Out of sight, out of mind.

[JoFerret]

64. The Bush Plague

.

[salinen]

6. Ah, they were sick anyway

[sabra]

7. yep, it's funny, it's working much better for them now

he he he

:puke:

[DBoon]

12. it's not like anyone has a RIGHT to medical care

this is america after all. None of that socialist nonsense. You have the right to die horribly under our system.

Why do you hate our freedom?

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Remember what

Bobby Magee's friend sung:

"Freedom's just another word for having nothing left to lose".

So many of the freest people in the western world. You're so lucky, and you're jist ungrateful to folks like Junior, Coulter and the rest, who made it all possible.

[NNN0LHI]

8. Aw shucks Barbara Bush says they were underprivileged anyway n/t

[i miss america]

16. And besides, why should we waste our beautiful minds on this?

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. Plus it was a Mandatory Evacuation you know

It is up to everyone to figure out how to get themselves out. Besides no one should live in that city any way.

:sarcasm:

[Jamastiene]

34. Yeah, what was said by FEMA? They brought it on themselves...

The US Government sees no responsibility to its citizens any more and then they have the gall to complain about rioting and lawlessness in the streets. You know the "looting" those people did to get water and food to survive took money out of the hands of rich people who lost their precious businesses. How dare any we, the tax paying citizens, expect our government to ever give any of it back in any way. We are just serfs to the lords of our government.

[SunDrop23]

20. And they were probably real sick too. nfm

[MADem]

24. But I'll bet this makes it less SCARY for her, dead people cannot move

to Houston!!

Dispicable woman!

[tavalon]

31. I hope dead people haunt her

and all of her useless spawn.

[Skittles]

62. they are sociopaths

there's no haunting

[Bob3]

9. These poor people I'm guessing were ones that could not

be moved due to their condition. Horrible just horrible. They don't seem to have gotten to the old age homes yet - I am very afraid of what we are going to find in them.

Oh god the inhumanity of it. People were dying and they did Nothing. Nothing. Dear god beasts in the fields show more compassion. But they did nothing they sat on their hands and made speeches and had their pictures taken with cake. Or didn't even bother to show up.
And now as the bodies are being pulled out all they think about is trying to protect themselves. If they had an ounce of real humanity in them they would resign en mass and demand that they be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. But they are monsters and their servants pink and well fed with fine homes are blaming the dead.

Bastards (the self made kind - not the accident's of birth).

[UpInArms]

10. let them eat cake

President George W. Bush joins Arizona Senator John McCain in a small celebration of McCain's 69th birthday Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, after the President's arrival at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix. The President later spoke about Medicare to 400 guests at the Pueblo El Mirage RV Resort and Country Club in nearby El Mirage. White House photo by Paul Morse

[daleo]

13. A couple more details

"Dr. Jeffrey Kochan, a Philadelphia radiologist volunteering in New Orleans, said the team that recovered the bodies told him late Sunday it found 36 floating on the first floor."
- just in case someone tries to claim they were already dead and from the hospital morgue.

"The 317-bed hospital, owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp., was still partially surrounded by floodwaters Monday. Tenet did not immediately return a call."
- So, about 15% died in the flood, assuming the hospital was full.

"The day after the hurricane hit, the company had said it was evacuating the hospital and hoped to have all patients into other facilities by the end of the day."
- There could be some interesting legal consequences. I guess it remains to be seen how all that will play out.

[AnneD]

22. As a nurse

I have a real problem with the fact that most hospitals require us to come into the hospital during a hurricane....Hell the patients should be evacuated out-FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY. Granted Katrina was called a bit late but still, what is the point of a warning. I'll be the first one to come back in after the fact-but to sit though it has always seemed stupid to me.

[NorthernSpy]

28. there were parts of New Orleans where the water rose VERY fast...

... after the levees began to break.

Grim as it is to imagine, hospital personnel may well have been unable to move everyone upstairs in time.

[RamboLiberal]

14. Wonder if any were humanely euthanized as rumored

???? - What would the right-to-lifers have to say? H'mmmmm.

* and Brownie and the rest of the cabal deserve to be haunted by these souls for the rest of their miserable lives.

[54anickel]

27. There was that story of the one guy, very large, that they couldn't

get down to the second floor from the fifth (pretty sure that was the scenario). So, the euthanized him.

[NorthernSpy]

29. I'd approach that rumor with caution...

The claim that doctors deliberately killed their patients has not been substantiated. The story that ran in the British tabloid the Daily Mail offers only one named source. This source turned out to be a man who was on the crew tasked with cleaning up downed trees in the St. Tammany Parish town of Abita Springs.

Is it impossible that doctors started killing their patients in New Orleans? Strictly speaking, no, it's not impossible in the sense that it would be impossible for me to eat the sun. The point is that the tabloid article offers no good reason to believe the allegations of euthanasia.

[tavalon]

32. If it happened

It wasn't killing, it was caring.

[superconnected]

15. I would like to know how many floors in that hospital and why the

hell they were on the first floor.

Oh, and I'd like to know more about the total evacuation of the people supposedly taking care of them.

And yes, they may have been the ones illegally euthanized.

Gotta love euthanization. It's so convient. *I have to go throw up now*

[rainbow4321]

18. Crappy gov. communication w/ the hospitals

I work for an HCA facility that posted an email from a worker inside Tulane Hospital. HCA owns Tulane.

The worker got a call from someone on phone who said "I hear you guys made it out"..the worker was confused since there were still 400 people in the building waiting to be rescued.

Apparently the LA governor had announced to the media that Tulane had been evacuated, that no one was left there...the worker told his friend "uh, she is about 400 people short...we are STILL HERE!".

How scary would that be? Being trapped in the facility, only to hear you have been "forgotten" or overlooked?????

I am NOT saying this is what happened in this hospital's case, just wanted to share what the in-house email/memo said. It was like 3 pages long and went into detail on their stay in the facility.


OH...and there was a hotel next to the hospital where relatives of hospital staff were...looters and armed people raided the hotel, forcing the family members into the hospital, so that also didn't help matters there.

[Eugene]

19. The owner said they were evacuating the patients.

So what the hell happened?

[RedSpartan]

21. And, of course:

When asked for comment, Barbara Bush said, "These people were all sick anyway, so, you know, this is working out very well for them."

[Lochloosa]

23. I'll bet the looters did it.....

i'm just saying

[tavalon]

33. Which ones?

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove? Gosh, there are so many.

[Lochloosa]

38. ...

:rofl:

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

35. D'ya think the repukes will now see through

the Terry Schiavo ploy?

[leftchick]

36. Let's do the numbers shall we? And They Don't Add Up!

These are all from news reports I have watched on TV over the last 2 weeks...32 dead in nursing home, 20 dead in hospice, 8 dead in another nursing home, 45 dead in this latest hospital situation, untold numbers dead at Charity hospital 100? 200?, (They will most likely be listed as natural causes!) and the 100 or so floating in and around the State of LA. And they have not even gotten to the bodies still trapped in homes under water!

Oh yes and the Funeral gate contractor is in charge of these bodies. Are we feeling good yet?

Now you tell me? Are they fucking with the numbers yet? You betcha!

:grr: :mad:

[leftchick]

37. I Forgot this

All of the folks at the airport who died after being transfered there. My God.... :(

[TexasLawyer]

39. Then, there are the bodies the authorities are just ignoring

On Democracy Now this morning, Amy did a report on a man's week-long efforts to get one body picked up from his neighborhood. It seemed as if the body was being deliberately left to rot.

To the extent bodies rot away to nothing, then... was there really a body there at all?

[TexasLawyer]

42. ACTION ITEM: Recording Katrina's Death Count

I saw this running tally on Daily Kos--

http://maverick.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/8/1837/41163

ACTION ITEM: Recording Katrina's Death Count
by ilona
Wed Sep 7th, 2005 at 22:08:37 PDT

Many are wondering if the death toll in the wake of the most massive government bungling since 9/11 will be swept under the rug. Many have suggested that we begin recording the reported accounts before information disappears or is scrubbed from websites.

In that vein, I've compiled a preliminary count, gathering data from a large variety of news sources. I'm continuing my research into the night/day, with additions as they are found. Any and all help in collecting additional death toll information by posting links here is much appreciated. Thanks in advance...

Additionally, information on what the initial plans are for examination and burial of the victims of Katrina is included at the very end. May they all rest in peace.


ilona's diary :: ::

Key to the following Katrina death count list:

The source (person, official, or department) of the statistic is listed following the # of bodies confirmed or mentioned by reputable source in bold. Link to news report information culled from follows in (brackets). If a body count is given without a source attributed, listing will include only body count information and link of news report it was found in. Parentheses and asterisks (*) signify a possible count redundancy in that group; the duplicate information is provided strictly for elucidation, and are immediately below totals they're believed to be represented in.

Anecdotal body count information (which may be considered less reliable or more depending upon which way you want to look at things), is listed under the heading Eyewitness Accounts. This group, tacked on to the end of the main lists, may contain redundant information (i.e., a body found tied to a highway sign may be the same body already listed in the official count).

<snip>

One possible reason for low death counts to date. According to the Washington Post:
The reason the number is so low is that the state (MS) only counts bodies that have been recovered and positively identified (which, with the condition of the bodies being collected, is becoming increasingly difficult to do).

[cyr330]

40. Tenet Hospital

I went to nursing school in New Orleans, and we had many of our clinical rotations at Baptist-Memorial. As much as I dislike the Tenet Health System, I am surprised at this. I just can't believe this happened out of neglect on their part--It must have been situational, or at least I hope it was. . . . Not that the end result would have been any different.

[BushSpeak]

41. N.O. doctors admit to helping patients die

The article speaks for itself.

"Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals."

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=361980&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=">We had to kill our patients

[NorthernSpy]

43. that questionable tabloid article has been discussed here at length...

And I believe that two threads about it have been locked so far.

Just so you know.

[BushSpeak]

63. Thanks for the correction

Guess the DU forums allow for a good system of checks and balances.

I'll be sendng out an info package to the media here in France, so you've saved me a bit of credibility.

[NorthernSpy]

44. DeepModem Mom posted a link to a good article about this is GD...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091205hospital_lat,0,1944570.story?coll=la-home-headlines

NEW ORLEANS -- Describing a desperate and harrowing struggle to comfort dying patients as floodwaters rose and the city descended into chaos, hospital staffers from Memorial Medical Center said today that 45 people died there during a six-day vigil.

Dave Goodson, director of support services at the hospital, said rescuers came and left — sometimes they helped take someone from the hospital and other times they brought new evacuees plucked from rooftops.

Since the Daily Mail article about doctors killing patients has made the rounds, and has been cited in this very thread, I'd like to point out a couple of things about what the LA Times article says, and what it does not say:

According the LA Times piece, after the flooding began, the conditions at Memorial were hell, and some of the most fragile patients didn't make it. But none of the hospital staff quoted in the article say anything about anyone euthanizing patients, or people shooting at the rescue helicopters, or anybody throwing molotov cocktails, or any rampaging mobs trying to loot the hospital or do bad things to the people inside.

[orleans]

45. they're gonna have to drain more bodies out with that bathwater

if they want the count to stay low.

[maddezmom]

46. kick to cmbine

[rodeodance]

47. Rescue team finds 45 corpses floating in flooded hospital

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article312327.ece


Rescue team finds 45 corpses floating in flooded hospital

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

Published: 13 September 2005

Crews searching for corpses in New Orleans have discovered the bodies of 45 patients who drowned in a flooded hospital that had been abandoned by the authorities.

The news came as Hurricane Katrina's death toll in Louisiana alone was raised yesterday to 279 from 197 and nudged the overall figure to around 500.

Officials said that the bodies were discovered on Sunday at the 317-bed Memorial Medical Centre, which had been without power since the hurricane struck.......

[texpatriot2004]

48. "Bush tours New Orleans to restore damaged Presidency"

[applegrove]

49. I think the hospital claims they were people who died and had not

been picked up by the coroner.

Let's hope that we only have one criminal retirement residence.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

61. A number of patients died between the time the power went out....

...and the evacuation of the hospital.

There were probably some additional bodies already in the morgue prior to Katrina.

[arrianna]

50. more dead bodies

I just finished reading an article about Doctors in the Hospitals giving the patients who were not going to make it overdoses of Morphine. I am sure some of those patients that were found floating around died by this. If i can find the article I will post it. It was Bandelier.net

[Cooley Hurd]

53. That's what was just speculated on AirAmerica's 'Morning Sedition'

Here's the article you're referring to:

http://dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,20281,16566858-5001022,00.html

Submerged ... New Orleans Patients put down

September 12, 2005

DOCTORS working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leave them to die in agony as they evacuated.

With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials.
</snip>

On this sad note, welcome to DU. :hi::cry:

[arrianna]

51. the article

The article can be found under another thread in the editorials and aother articles forum thanks to Rodeodance!


( is that ok? *whispering*)

[Midlodemocrat]

52. I think that article has been debunked as a Ruper Murdoch

source.

[Moderator]

54. arrianna

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to four paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

[arrianna]

55. ooops

Only on my third post and already got the mod's attention. Sorry!!
* hanging my head and walking very quickly to the rule forum*

:blush:

[NMDemDist2]

56. LOL, welcome to DU arrianna

:hi:

[arrianna]

57. Thank you!

Just read the rules again....yeah I said again. There it is, big and bold right in front of me. I think it's all the coffee I drank this morning. Like the time i spent a half an hour looking for my favourate pencil.....and found it in my hand.

[rodeodance]

58. so has Forest McQueen been found or does he just 'get around"?. see

this DU thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x156288

[bettyellen]

59. psssst, arrianna... i think he's hinting you need to edit your post!

welcome to DU

[arrianna]

60. Thanks again

Thank you!
I'm over here sweating! :hide:

[Rhiannon12866]

65. That's fine. You can even post the thread, if you want to, or the article.

And I second the warm welcome to DU, at this tragic time.:hi:;(