This is just the begining. How high will this all go?
Is this the same as negligent homicide as Fox has up?
Also Fox is saying the owners are in jail.
I hope they've arrested them already. Otherwise they've all very likely made a run for it.
Seem like it should be against Nagin and Blanco accessories.
And the Mayor and Governor who failed to execute any part of the evacuation plan...?
check this out ping!
I hope Weepy Blanco is next..
Charging the owners of the nursing home with the deaths of 34 people. Mable Mengano and Salvador Mengano the owners surrendered to authorities, were arrested and have been jailed.
Owners were asked if they wanted to move the patients, they said "no". Repeated warnings by local officials.
Good. I hope people get jail time. Also, no family member of anyone who died should get a cent from this. I also hold the family members accountable for not making sure that their loved one was safe. However, I expect to see crying family members saying they deserve money from the nursing home.
Judge Napalitano said this is very serious, and that this would be the same as if the patients were withheld food or water (among other things).....funny, I seemed to recall that withholding food and water wasn't a problem.
Owner is in deep dudu. City was under mandatory evac order. The home was not in the list of type of facility exempted. Some reports are very clear that the owner of the place ordered a "no evac."
It's hard to tell how they could ever actually prove the case. While the staff has some duty to the nursing home residents, I don't think the law requires them to do anything that would put themselves at risk.
The local Fox affiliate just named and shamed the place as St. Rita's.
Nursing home, hospital, police, mayor, and governor is a good start.
Just got this CNN breaking news email:
Owners of flooded St. Rita's Nursing Home charged with 34 counts of homicide, Louisiana attorney general says.
They're suing the staff? What ever happened to going for the deep pockets?
The staff probably have nothing to their names, except what's left on their $2,000.00 debit cards.
Since this story broke, I have wondered what really happened. The workers may have had no way to evacuate those patients. I'd like to know what (if any) evac plans the nursing home had....was there transportation & the workers didn't use it? Did they try to call anyone to get the folks out? Did they notify the families? We simply don't know yet.
Therriot thinks about 60 other people died, apart from the 30 or so at St. Rita's.He is worried that because of the horrifying accounts of what happened at St. Rita's, people may not understand how much was done to save lives here. He is fiercely loyal to the Manganos, owners of the nursing home.
"Before I joined the sheriff's department, I was an EMT (emergency medical technician), and I was in there lots of times," Therriot said, adding that he had known the owners for more than two decades. "It was the nicest, cleanest nursing home in the parish. Mable and Sal were very good people."
In fact, when he was interviewed, Therriot said he was convinced that the Manganos had died in the home, refusing to leave their patients.
"I'll bet you they find them in there," he said.
But later, Larry Ingargiola, a leading emergency management official for the parish, said the Manganos had been found.
"They are alive," he said. "We have had contact with them, but don't ask me what happened there. I just don't know."
It is not known where the Manganos are and what they have said to authorities. It also is not known what happened to the nurses and other attendants at the home.
Various accounts have surfaced: that the Manganos thought they had the situation in hand and refused buses offered by local officials; that an agreement with another nursing home for transportation somehow fell apart.
What is known is that of some 60 patients -- elderly, mentally disabled, convalescents -- about half were found dead at the facility. It has been reported that those who could walk got out and those who were bedridden didn't make it. It also has been reported that a table had been found nailed over a window, apparently in a last desperate attempt to halt the deluge
Nursing home deaths test parish
According to the three men who run the parish the parish president, the sheriff and the fire chief, who said they saw it themselves hundreds of residents were killed, including 31 who were found in a nursing home. Officials said there were 65 residents at the nursing home, St. Rita's, but they could not say how some of them survived while others perished.In a telephone interview on Saturday night, Joseph A. Donchess, executive director of the Louisiana Nursing Home Association, said he was told about the deaths at the nursing home on Friday by the Coast Guard, which had sent a reconnaissance team there. "Thank God, some people did survive," Donchess said. "Some people were literally plucked out of the water by Coast Guard helicopters and were evacuated to the airport and sent on to Houston."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3339745
Steve Kuiper, vice president of operations for Acadian Ambulance, said he was told that St. Rita's had an evacuation plan that depended on another nursing home. Acadian, by far the largest ambulance provider in the state, used helicopters to evacuate many of the parish's neediest medical cases after the storm hit. But Mr. Kuiper said he never heard from St. Rita's."They didn't think this would ever happen," Mr. Melerine said. "They just didn't evacuate."
And what about the charges against Noodle Nagin? and Blank-o?
This is even more involved, and ugly.
Remember the tearful discription by a fellow named Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press two Sundays ago after Russert skewered Chertoff? Broussard was blaming the feds and Bush for the slow response to Katrina which caused the death of the mother of a friend of his who was in a nursing home. St. Rita's was/is the nursing home.
Another piece to this, in his tearful explanation, Broussard went thru a day by day of the woman calling her son and asking if anyone was coming for her. Then, Broussard tearfully closed saying she died on Friday,Sept 2nd because no one ever came. But, if one reads the several newspaper stories about this nursing home tragedy, inclusive of the NY Times, the patients died on Monday, August 29th, the same day that the storm rolled into Louisianna.
That Meet the Press interview was a scummy CYA by a local Democrat hack.