Judge Napolitano (FOX) was talking about this with John Gibson....
..We all know Gov.Blanco and the Mayor waffled, waffled, waffled bigtime whether to order mandatory evacuations.
...and only did so at the very last minute...
...From what Judge & John said yesterday, this nursing home called the relatives of these older folks and told them they could come get them.
The relatives declined.
The 'home' decided to hunker down and there were nursing home workers who were there with the residents and who died along with them.
These residents weren't abandoned by the workers.
It is a hard call.
Here in Florida, a very excellent assisted living home, bussed their residents all the way to Atlanta!!!.....and it took long long hours to get there and these folks are not spritely.
Another home decided to hunker down....and had brought in extra medical supplies and food and workers to sit through the night with the residents.
..the manager of this facility lost the roof of her own home while she spent the night with the residents.
My opinion....the owners of this home are the first scapegoats so that those who want to blame someone can look to them.........
..rather than Blanco and Nagin...where the real blame belongs!!!
They are all guilty. I can not see giving the nursing home people a pass when every other nursing home in the parish evacuated their patients and from what I hear with no loss of life in the process. If you run a nursing home on a coast that has hurricanes on a regular basis evacuating the patients is part of doing business. If it is too much hassle have a business somewhere else.
Telling families they "can" come get their relative is a lot different from saying "Come and get them because we are not going to evacuate" From interviews with family members I have heard they were assured their loved one would be evacuated. If the patient was ambulatory it would be easy for families to get them. If they had special needs they did not have equipment of training to deal with they were not unreasonable or lax in thinking the nursing home would keep their word.
I think your right. I've worked in nursing homes before and some of these poeple are very fragile, not to mention the ones who are extremely over weight and have to be lifted with medical equipment, how are you going to get them on and off a bus?