45 Bodies Are Found in a New Orleans Hospital- 3 stories

September 13, 2005
45 Bodies Are Found in a New Orleans Hospital
By KIRK JOHNSON
Correction Appended
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 12 - The bodies of 45 people have been found in a flooded uptown hospital here, officials said Monday, sharply increasing the death toll from Hurricane Katrina and raising new questions about the breakdown of the evacuation system as the disaster unfolded.
Officials at the hospital, the Memorial Medical Center, said at least some of the victims died while waiting to be removed in the four days after the hurricane struck, with the electricity out and temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
Steven L. Campanini, a spokesman for the hospital's owner, Tenet Healthcare, said the dead included patients who died awaiting evacuation as well as people who died before the hurricane struck and whose bodies were in the hospital morgue.
Mr. Campanini said the dead might have also included evacuees from other hospitals and the surrounding neighborhood who gathered at Memorial while waiting to evacuate the city.
Repercussions from the storm continued to echo in Washington, where the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown, a walking symbol to many people here of government failure in the crisis, resigned. Mr. Brown was relieved of his role in the day-to-day disaster operations here on Friday. (Related Article)
President Bush, meanwhile, toured the ghostly streets of the city standing in the back of an open-air truck flanked by the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, who have been sharply critical of the federal performance.
In Baton Rouge, 1,000 people from the devastated St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, crowded the State Capitol and were told that memories of their community might be all they have left.
Flights were set to resume at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, and city officials said they were creating a new command center downtown at a closed hotel.
Mr. Bush's appearance with Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, both Democrats, suggested that at least some of the bitterness over the response to the disaster had lifted.
On Mr. Bush's most recent visit to the stricken area, on Sept. 5, Ms. Blanco learned that he was making the trip from news reports.
The president, in a brief question and answer session with reporters after his tour on Monday, said that government coordination in rebuilding the city and the region was paramount and that local vision should determine the direction of the reconstruction. "It's very important for the folks in New Orleans to understand that, at least as far as I'm concerned, this great city has got ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy and set the vision," Mr. Bush said after his 40-minute tour. "Our role at the federal government is, you know, obviously within the law, to help them realize that vision. And that's what I wanted to assure the mayor."
Mr. Bush also returned to accusations that racial discrimination was involved in government's response to the hurricane, saying "the storm didn't discriminate" and neither did the rescuers.
Mr. Nagin and Ms. Blanco have said federal delays in sending aid had compounded the damage of the storm and heightened the anarchy in the days after the storm, when tens of thousands of people were trapped for days at sites like the Convention Center and the Superdome without food or water.
Mr. Nagin said in a radio interview Monday, when asked about his meeting with the president, "If anything, he told me he kind of appreciated my frankness and my bluntness."
The news that 45 bodies had been found at Memorial was also a reminder of how much else, in the physical structure and in the human toll, might yet remain unknown.
On Monday, the authorities elevated the statewide death toll from Hurricane Katrina to 279; of those, 242 were from the New Orleans metropolitan region. In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour said the toll there was 218.
In Baton Rouge, there were more reminders of the thousands of people who may have no community to return to at all.
More than 1,000 displaced residents from St. Bernard Parish crowded the State Capitol to learn about the state of their devastated houses. No one has been permitted to re-enter the area to retrieve belongings or examine their houses. News of the meeting traveled by word of mouth and Web sites, and people lined up for blocks outside the Art Deco Capitol, where Gov. Huey P. Long was assassinated in 1935. Some drove from Houston.
Local officials did not try to hide the bad news.
"You will not recognize St. Bernard Parish," the parish president, Henry J. Rodriguez Jr., told hundreds of residents in the marble foyer of the Capitol. "All you will have left of St. Bernard Parish is your memories."
Mr. Bush also saw the devastation first-hand on his tour of New Orleans. His tour passed by smashed cars, tree branches and rubble.
For most of the ride, Ms. Blanco, Mr. Bush and Mr. Nagin stood in a military truck and had to duck under low wires and branches. At one point, Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, who succeeded Mr. Brown last week as head of hurricane relief, removed his Coast Guard cap to shield Mr. Bush from a wire.
City officials said they had moved most of the makeshift emergency operations command center that they had set up at City Hall since the storm arrived across the street to a battered Hyatt hotel, where power has been restored and Mayor Nagin keeps a suite.
In Ballroom E on the third floor of the hotel, 100 computer stations were set up at pods of circular tables to handle 24-hour work by groups like the New Orleans police, 82nd Airborne Division of the Army, the Coast Guard, National Guard and public health officials.
Edward Minyard, a contractor with Unisys who is in charge of setting up the center, said the operation was very likely to grow to as many as 500 positions, meaning as many as 1,500 people working in shifts around the clock.
In Harrison County, Miss., in the Gulfport-Biloxi region, a list of 600 missing persons was distributed by the coroner's office, though authorities emphasized that the people on the list were not necessarily missing. The names are of people who have been sought by family members.
"We have rescued everybody that we think could possibly be rescued," said Joe Spraggins, the head of emergency management for the county.
Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, which began running commercial flights at the end of last week, expects to return to its regular flight schedule in two weeks, Colonel Spraggins said.
Delta, Northwest and AirTran Airlines plan to begin operating limited schedules on Tuesday, he said. Northwest said it would resume scheduled commercial service to the New Orleans airport on Tuesday, with its first inbound flight in 10 days scheduled to arrive from Memphis at 10:44 a.m. Repairs began on Monday on the Twin Span Bridge on Interstate 10, connecting New Orleans and Slidell. Within 45 days, the eastbound span is to be repaired, providing one lane of traffic in each direction.
Reporting for this article was contributed bySewell Chan in Baton Rouge, La.; Michael Luo and William Yardley in New Orleans; and Campbell Robertson in Gulfport, Miss.Correction:Sept. 14, 2005, Wednesday:A front-page article yesterday about hurricane recovery efforts misstated the day Northwest Airlines was scheduled to resume commercial service to the New Orleans airport. It was yesterday, not today.


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45 bodies found inside New Orleans hospital
President tours devastated city with mayor, governor
- Kirk Johnson, New York Times
Tuesday, September 13, 2005



New Orleans -- The bodies of 45 people have been found in a flooded uptown hospital here, officials said Monday, sharply increasing the death toll from Hurricane Katrina and raising new questions about the breakdown of the evacuation system as the disaster unfolded.

Hospital officials said that at least some of the victims had died while waiting to be evacuated in the four days after the hurricane struck, with the electricity out and temperatures rising to over 100.

Steven L. Campanini, a spokesman for the hospital's owner, Tenet Healthcare, said the dead included not only patients who died while awaiting evacuation, but also people who died before the hurricane struck. The dead may also have included evacuees from other hospitals and from the surrounding neighborhood who gathered at Memorial Medical Center for shelter or safety to wait evacuation from the city.

The announcement, which raises Louisiana's official death toll to nearly 280, came as President Bush got his first up-close look at the destruction. On Monday, the president toured the city's ghostly streets standing in the back of an open-air truck flanked by the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, who have both been sharply critical of the federal government's performance.

In Baton Rouge, about 1,000 people from devastated St. Bernard Parish just outside New Orleans crowded the state Capitol and were told that memories of their community might be all they have left. Flights were set to resume at the Louis Armstrong Airport, and city officials said they were creating a new command center downtown at a closed hotel.

Bush's appearance with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, both Democrats, suggested that at least some of the acrimony over the response to the disaster had lifted. On Bush's last visit to the stricken area Sept. 5, the governor learned the president was coming only from news reports.

The president, in a brief question-and-answer session with reporters after the tour, said that government coordination in rebuilding the city and the region was paramount and that local vision should determine the direction of the reconstruction.

"It's very important for the folks in New Orleans to understand that, at least as far as I'm concerned, this great city has got ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy and set the vision," Bush said after his 40-minute tour with the governor and mayor. "Our role at the federal government is, you know, obviously within the law, to help them realize that vision. And that's what I wanted to assure the mayor."

But the discovery of the bodies on Sunday night at Memorial, a 317-bed hospital in the city's uptown section, overshadowed the upbeat talk about the future.

Armed National Guard troops guarded the entrance to the hospital and would not allow anyone inside. The entire bank of windows of the hospital's emergency room was shattered, lying near the stretchers and chairs inside. Pieces of plywood covered broken windows as high as the hospital's top floor, eight stories above. Cars in the parking lot were caked with grime from the floodwaters. The area surrounding the hospital, however, was dry.

Nagin and Blanco have said that federal government delays in bringing aid to the stricken city and the region had compounded the storm's damage and heightened the anarchy in New Orleans in the days after the storm, when tens of thousands of people were trapped for days in places like the Convention Center and the Superdome without food or water.

The news that 45 bodies had been found at the hospital was a reminder of how much else, in both the city's physical structure and the hurricane's human toll, might yet remain unknown.

Campanini, the hospital spokesman, said Tenet Healthcare did not yet know how many of the 45 deceased were patients and how many had gathered there for shelter or safety. The hospital had begun stocking food and supplies and transferring patients to other hospitals before the hurricane hit, he said. But it still had 115 patients by Tuesday, when the levees broke and water began flooding the city.

With private helicopters and help from the Coast Guard and the New Orleans Fire Department, the hospital evacuated 2,000 people, including the majority of patients, he said. Campanini stopped short of blaming the authorities, but he said the need for evacuation was well known. "There were reports across the entire New Orleans and Biloxi area that there were frail and elderly patients who were not surviving," he said.

Robert Johannessen, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said Monday that it had confirmed that 45 bodies were found inside Memorial hospital, but he said he could not confirm Campanini's account of how they had died. He said the circumstances of the deaths were still under investigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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45 Bodies Recovered From Flood-Stricken New Orleans Hospital As City Slowly Climbs Back to Life
By BRETT MARTEL
The Associated Press
Sep. 12, 2005 - The bodies of 45 patients have been found at a flooded-out hospital, a state health official said Monday amid otherwise encouraging signs large and small that New Orleans is climbing back two weeks after it was slammed by Hurricane Katrina.

The bodies were found Sunday at 317-bed Memorial Medical Center, which was abandoned more than a week ago after it was surrounded by floodwaters, said Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Hospitals.

The Louisiana death toll rose to 279, up from 197 on Sunday, Johannesen said.

Meanwhile, more than half of southeastern Louisiana's water treatment plants were up and running again Monday, and business owners were issued passes into the city to retrieve vital records or equipment as New Orleans continued to stir back to life.

Also, President Bush got his first up-close look at the destruction in New Orleans on Monday, taking a tour that took him through several flooded neighborhoods. Occasionally, he had to duck to avoid low-hanging electrical wires and branches.

In Washington, Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown announced he is resigning "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president." Brown has been vilified for the government's sluggish response to the tragedy. Last week, he was stripped of responsibility for overseeing the cleanup and was abruptly recalled to Washington.

As for the discovery of the bodies at the hospital, Johannesen said he had no further information, and Police Chief Eddie Compass declined to answer any questions, including whether police received any calls for assistance from those inside Memorial Medical Center after the hospital was evacuated.

"I can't say nothing," Compass said, referring questions to a spokeswoman for Mayor C. Ray Nagin who did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Dr. Jeffrey Kochan, a Philadelphia radiologist volunteering in New Orleans, said he spoke Sunday night with members of the team that recovered the bodies. He said they told him they found 36 corpses floating on the first floor.

"That's what they were talking about last night," Kochan said. "These guys were just venting. They need to talk. They're seeing things no human being should have to see."

To prevent looting, business owners wanting to enter the city's central business district and take what they needed to run their companies were required by police to obtain passes.

Traffic was heavy on the only major highway into the city that was still open, and vehicles were backed up for about two miles at a National Guard checkpoint across the Mississippi River from New Orleans.

Among the businessmen allowed back was Terry Cockerham, owner of Service Glass, which installs windows at businesses downtown. He has been working out of his house because his business was destroyed by looters and flooding.

"This is about the most work I've ever had," he said. "We'll work seven days a week until we get this job finished. I don't want to get rich. I just want to get everything back right."

There were also signs of life at businesses elsewhere in the city.

In the French Quarter, Nick Ditta was at Mango Mango, the bar he manages on Bourbon Street, searching for time cards. "It's a mess man. There is no doubt about it," Ditta said. "But our people are going to get paid. That's all I'm worried about."

During his visit to New Orleans, the president denied there was any racial component to the way the government responded to the disaster, disputing assertions that Washington was sluggish because so many of the victims were poor and black.

"The storm didn't discriminate and neither will the recovery effort," Bush said. He also rejected suggestions that the nation's military was stretched too thinly with the war in Iraq to deal with the Gulf Coast devastation.

Though 50 percent of New Orleans remained flooded down from 80 percent during the darkest days and teams continued to collect hundreds, perhaps thousands, of corpses, there were clear signs of recovery: Over the weekend, trash collection resumed, and the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport reopened for cargo traffic. It planned to open to limited passenger service starting Tuesday.

A plane carrying equipment to rebuild New Orleans' mobile phone networks took off from Sweden on Monday after waiting more than a week for a go-ahead from the United States. The shipment included network equipment donated by the Swedish cell phone giant LM Ericsson.

"Each day there's a little bit of an improvement," Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, commander of the New Orleans relief efforts, told NBC on Sunday night. "And in the end run, maybe a week, two weeks from now, someone's going to wake in the morning and have something they didn't have the day before, and that's hope."

State officials said Monday that 16 of southeast Louisiana's 25 major wastewater treatment plants were up and running again.

In the effort to drain the flooded area, 41 of 174 permanent pumps were in operation, and officials expected an increase in temporary pumps within 24 hours.

As of late Sunday, water in many parts of the metropolitan area was going down at least a foot a day, the Army Corps of Engineers said. Once the streets are dry, crews can begin removing debris, checking buildings and other structures for soundness, and restoring utilities.

Military cargo airplanes were set to begin spraying the area on Monday to kill flies and mosquitoes. The standing water from Katrina is expected to worsen Louisiana's already considerable mosquito problem. Before the storm hit, the state had logged 78 cases of mosquito-borne West Nile virus and four deaths from the disease this year.

Insurance experts doubled to at least $40 billion their estimate of insured losses caused by Katrina a figure that would make it the world's costliest hurricane ever. Risk Management Solutions Inc. of Newark, Calif., put the total economic damage at more than $125 billion.

In the French Quarter, burnt-orange rubble from terra-cotta roof tiles sat in neat piles for collection along the curb. Bourbon Street was cleaner than it ever is during Mardi Gras. And Donald Jones, a 57-year-old lifelong resident, said he was no longer armed when walking his street.

"The first five days I never went out of my house without my gun. Now I don't carry it," Jones said over the weekend. "The only people I meet is military."

Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, commander of active-duty troops engaged in hurricane relief, reiterated Sunday the number of dead would be "a heck of a lot lower" than initial projections of perhaps 10,000.


Associated Press writers Erin McClam, Mary Foster, Colleen Long, Warren Levinson and Howie Rumberg contributed to this report.