Posted on 09/11/2007 6:39:30 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
ST. FRANCISVILLE, La., Sept. 7 -- The day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Sal and Mabel Mangano waffled, then decided against evacuating the mom-and-pop nursing home they owned.
By morning, 35 of their frailest patients would be dead, drowned in their wheelchairs and beds by the storm surge.
On Friday night, after four hours of deliberations, a jury acquitted the Manganos of negligent homicide, charges that could have put them in prison for life. The case raised broader questions about who, if anyone, deserves to be punished for the deaths in Katrina's deadly flooding............."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Also this is the tragedy made famous by the crying Louisiana pol Aaron Broussard blaming the federal government for not evacuating them.
Aaron Broussard and Tim Russert: The Saga Continues (Lyin, Cryin & Caught!)
They should have tried Nagin and Blanco.
The notion of trying to convict these nursing home operators while Blanco and Nagin are still running around as mayor and governor, is a travesty.
This is Louisiana, they don’t convict politicians they reelect them.
No surprise that these two walked after leaving the people in their care to drown. Look at the doctor who gave an OD to the patients at the hospital in N.O., and after killing them, left. The grand jury would not indict her. Apparently LA has no enforceable laws against murder. No wonder New Orleans has such a huge murder problem - it’s a freebie!
All those people want to to is blame the feds and get money, just like Aaron Broussard.
Keep in mind, the victims in both cases were the very old.
If Pou or the Manganos had caused the deaths of children, it would have been a different story.
The old are the first to be thought of as disposable when the going gets rough.
The Manganos cared about the $$ it would have cost to transport their patients. EVERYONE who lives in the N.O. area- especially St. Bernard parish- knows you can’t survive a Cat 5 hurricane here! To claim otherwise is to admit to being utterly stupid- and that’s a helluva reason for people to drown in their beds!
Bottom line- these people PAID to be cared for, which logically includes being taken out of harms way. They were not- but I bet their checks were cashed!
All I can say is- if anyone related to me had drowned at St.Ritas, the Manganos wouldn’t walk around free for very long. And I will understand any family members who feel the same way.
Did they leave them? The article says they hunkered down with their patients.
Since murder is a Freebie there, I doubt that a grand jury would indict some relative who lost someone who chose to even the score.
My own view is that the Governor of Lousiana, in a state of emergency declaration, had the legal means to DEMAND that a place like that nursing home be evacuated, the responsibility to make that demand, given %’s stated for a Katrina landfall in the New Orleans area, and a responsibility to arrange for or commandeer any assistance needed for such an evacuation.
Like Nagin and other liberals in Louisiana, she was waiting for someone else to do her job and save her the expense and effort. In a moral sense, I also think the nursing home owners also had a responsibility to request government assistance for an evacuation, if the lack of the means to affect that evacuation was their issue. Then, they could have at least said they asked the authorities for help and got none.
In a much broader sense, when you look at a map that reflects the topography of the area (showing how many feet above or below see level each area of land is) a sane person would ask who in the hell ever permitted a nursing home to be built where it was. There should be no one in that area but self-supporting people who can get themselves out - north and to higher land.
here are some facts: from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-11-28-st-ritas_x.htm
“What passes for high ground in Louisiana’s southeastern marshlands are the patches of terra firma (not very much above sea level) that did not flood during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.”
“St. Rita’s Nursing Home was built 20 years ago on one of those patches. That (the patches that survived Betsy) figured prominently in the decision by Sal and Mabel Mangano, St. Rita’s owners, to ride out Hurricane Katrina in their one-story brick building rather than follow an order by St. Bernard Parish to evacuate the home’s 60 residents. The Manganos even invited their relatives, staffers and the staff’s relatives to use St. Rita’s as a shelter, and nearly 30 people accepted the offer. (Related photo gallery: Remnants of St. Rita’s)”
“For a few moments after Katrina barreled through on the morning of Aug. 29, it seemed the Manganos had made the right decision: The parking lot was dry, the roof intact. Then disaster struck. When Sal Mangano and several other men stepped outside to inspect the grounds, they heard a low rumbling sound. A wall of water appeared, rolling toward them. The men raced back inside and fortified the doors and windows. The water hit the building, rose up the sides and then burst inside.”
“Forecasters had predicted a 21-foot storm surge in [low lying] St. Bernard Parish that would last more than six hours. The parish council ordered a mandatory evacuation on Aug. 28, the day before Katrina hit, and St. Rita’s was the only one of the five nursing homes in the parish that did not comply —— facts that would seem to help prosecutors in the Manganos’ case.”
If it was a jury trial, maybe the local jurors are so fed up with the local and state officials that they hated to see this couple as the only ones held to account.
Nothing like old news!
Thanks, I was hoping someone would reference that case.
you prefer to have your grandmother die drowning in a wheelchair, or to be given an injection that slowed her respirations and put her to sleep?
When the mandatory evacuation for Ivan was called there were several elderly nursing home patients who died because of the time it took to get to Baton Rouge. It was like 12+ hours to go what normally took an hour. Ivan turned and completely missed New Orleans at the last minute. I could see the reasoning to a degree. I know I wouldn’t have hunkered down though.
IMO, some of the family members need to look at themselves for not evacuating their family member themselves, especially for those who were ambulatory instead of suing. I know I took my wheel chair bound, oxygen dependent father when I evacuated for Lili. Because I took responsibility for my father it freed up space, time, and personnel for those without family. Was it easy, hell no, my father was a pain in the ass but it was my responsibility not the government’s or other health care agency.
NOBODY drowned or was likely to drown on the 7th floor. Are you Dr. Kevorkian, one of his euthanasia death-freak followers who would get your rocks off “doing” people, or did you not read the facts in the articles about the patients murdered in the N.O. hospital by Dr. Pou?
Look, I am “small government”, “keep the government out of my life as much as possible” conservative, as much as the next conservative. But I am a “small government”, “limited government” conservative, not a “no government” Libertarian.
Major natural catastrophes are extraordinary circumstances that represent the exception that proves the rule - security is the first thing (main thing) the government is required to do, or your freedom is but a notion, not a reality.
Should I take as much effort and responsibility to secure my own family? Yes. Does that limit the role of government to folding its arms and depending on my efforts alone, particularly in a major natural catastrophe? No. In fact, it has an obligation to be pro-active in its concerns and its actions and to give notice of what are the best actions people should take (because its information should be more complete, more robust) and it should be ready and able to demand that some of those best actions be taken and to offer assistance for members of its community to attain those best actions, for those who might need it.
To rely on all citizens to take a Libertarian approach and for the officials to wait, arms folded, and rely on nothing but individual citizens own actions, in those extreme circumstances, is an abdication of the concept of having any government at all. The dividing line is morality. Yes we each of a certain philosophical moral obligation for self-responsibility, while government, in those circumstances, has a legal moral obligation towards the whole community for the community role we, freely, assign to it.
Many Libertarians seem to be unable to realize the difference between philosophical purity and human reality, with regard to the moral obligations we have as individuals and the moral obligations we have as communities. Which is why I have never embraced the anarchy of the Libertarian purists.
I understand what you are saying and I agree but in times of extreme emergency the family must get back to learning how to think and do for themselves and their dependent family members. My point is that needs to be dealt with honestly is that families need to take responsibility where they can.
That frees up the often very limited resources for those who don’t have any family to help. Too many people simply dump their elders off in a very understaffed environment and then leave everything up to those people who have their own families to worry about.
That issue is being discussed at least in my part of the state.
http://www.kplctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7054308&nav=menu66_3
Look, I disagree NOT a bit with your self-responsibility position, what I will NOT do is allow it to be given as an excuse for local and state government failure; because no matter how much WE SHOULD BE as self-responsible as possible, that does not absolve them of their duties.
I am sure that was Nagin’s and Blanco’s position - “they had a TV and a radio, what did they need from me”????
The extension of that, taking your position in its purest terms, is to find total agreement with it - all individuals should be 100% self-responsible 100% of them time - there is no government there for anything. In practical terms, the end result of that Libertarian purity is nothing more than anarchy, which always eventually produces the opposite, dictatorship.
To continue a survivable civil society you have a government and no matter how much you should do many things yourself, that can never absolve that government for the things IT should do. If a major natural catastrophe IS NOT an area where conservatives share an agreement on limited and limited-time extension of what the government should do, I do not know what is.
Your state can prosecute the nursing home owners all you want. I think the bigger crime is that Nagin and Blanco are not now in jail.
The nursing home wasn’t in New Orleans proper but in St. Bernard Parish. So Nagin is off the hook there. It wasn’t his jurisdiction. This area did not flood with Betsy and had survived other storms since. Had the levees held up like they were supposed to they would have been fine then too.
As long as we keep ignoring the obvious then NO CHANGE will take place. Too many people dump their elderly parents off and wash their hands of the responsibility leaving it to others to deal with. As you can see from the link I provided that is being addressed sometimes these storms blow up out of nowhere like Humberto did today. There may not always be a lot of time to get things done.
I live here and understand the enormity of the task involved. Like I said, I took my invalid parent out myself even though I could have left it up to the agency where he was being cared for. I knew how swamped the workers were and all of them had their own families and property to secure too. They were very relieved and thankful that I took care of my father. That allowed them to help someone else and finish up their jobs sooner in order to take care of their own families.
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