Evacuation of hospitals
The hospitals were explicitly exempt from the Mayor's mandatory evacuation
order. A spokesman said "Hospitals don't evacuate. Hospitals stay in place."
Rather they were required to have enough emergency provisions to operate for
two to three days during a disaster.
Many people, however, were outside seeking refuge and they saw hospitals as
tall, solid buildings. And some of these people had friends or relatives
currently receiving treatment. Initially people were allowed in. As a result,
there were claims that 2,000 people became trapped in the Memorial Medical
Centre, a 339-bedded hospital. However, it lost power when its back-up
generators failed. The elevators and the air conditioning stopped working. One
local resident who had escaped there told a reporter of the "heroic" efforts of
nurses to keep patients cool by wafting them with cardboard for hours.
Currently, legal action is underway concerning events on the seventh floor of
the hospital. This was leased to a private company that provides long-term
patient care. Escape was only possible at the first floor level, six floors
below, where boats were transporting patients to helicopters. On the first
floor however, the odour was 'horrendous' as a result of the stifling heat and
the backed-up sewers. Moreover helicopters were scarce and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency was intervening. According to the New York
Times:
When private companies dispatched helicopters, trucks and buses to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes, officials from FEMA commandeered some of them for other uses ... The rescue of those who had remained in their homes, or were sheltered in an increasingly chaotic Superdome, became a priority.
The doctors and nurses were faced with few options. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly, evacuations were sporadic and security was compromised. Staff agonized whether to attempt to transport critically ill patients who might not survive the arduous evacuation. It appears another choice was considered: whether to end the lives of those who could not be moved.
The actions of one doctor and two nurses have become another on-going legal
case. Allegedly they had been engaged in acts of euthanasia. Thus the policy
that hospitals should not evacuate but should be able to cope with emergencies
had failed and staff were placed in an iniquitous position. There were no plans
for a 'no alternative but to escape' scenario.
In summary there are six key issues in the on-going debates and legal actions
associated with nursing homes and hospitals:
-
the existence and status of evacuation plans
-
deciding whether and when to evacuate
-
the availability of transport
-
the preparation of refuges
-
the responsibilities of staff in managing an evacuation
-
the practice of euthanasia.
Lessons to be learnt
It is too early to draw any firm conclusions from Katrina. The available
evidence however casts some light on how age is relevant to the organisation of
mass evacuations and the position of older people in western societies. The
most obvious point is that the media focus on race and poverty has tended to
mask the issue of age.
The significance of the statistical association of physical capacity and age is
confirmed. It is clear that on average older people are slower, less resilient
and less inclined to escape. This is, and should be, taken into account in the
planning of evacuations.
Secondly, past experience and personal biographies are relevant. The real
disaster in New Orleans was not the hurricane itself, but the breaching of the
levees and the subsequent flooding of large parts of the city. Had the levees
not been breached then it is possible that there would have been far fewer
deaths. Possibly most of the deaths of older people would have been due to the
stress of evacuation, rather than the trials of sitting out the hurricane. The
mistake of many was to think that Katrina was ‘just another hurricane’.
Finally, the concept of 'special needs' is a double-edged sword. Several
commentators noted that the highest rates of Katrina-related deaths were among
hospital patients and the residents of nursing homes.
Some might react to this by arguing that the elderly and critically ill were at
the end of their lives and, when faced with such a calamitous situation, the
young should come first. But as one grandson commented: "My grandmother wasn't
supposed to die like this".
