Your Fault - Not Bush's
CHALMETTE, La. – When St. Bernard Parish officials realized last week that St. Rita’s Nursing Home had not evacuated as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the parish, they called to ask why. Their offer to send buses to help was turned down, they said Wednesday.
No one knows for sure why officials of St. Rita’s, a privately owned nursing home, chose not to evacuate. On Wednesday, officials were still unsure of the number of people who died there, but previous estimates put the toll at 30 or more.
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I drug bodies to the levee after Hurricane Betsy,” said 60-year-old Raymond Couture, one of the rescuers searching St. Rita’s this week.
This suburban parish a few miles from downtown New Orleans was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding. Officials have estimated that the parish’s death toll may reach 500.
Details of what happened at the facility are still sketchy, but the descriptions of what’s inside the single-story, football-field-size building horrify even hardened disaster veterans.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/katrina/stories/090805dntexkatrita.2ee8c38.html