I read or heard someplace (and now i don't remember where except that it was somewhere that sounded to me like a reliable single-witness account) that medical staff at one hospital was DEBATING the question of whether dying patients that could not be evacuated should be euthanized if and when the staff had to be evacuated and patients left behind. I do not know the outcome of that discussion for some reason. Possibly it was reported by somebody who was still on the scene in a hospital. The report I heard may have been the origin of the Mail story, just twisted a little to make it more sensational.
If there were hospitals where staff was evacuated but patients left behind, this question had to have come up. But did that actually happen at any hospital? There were clearly patients that died due to deterioriating conditions while waiting to be evacuated, but as far as I know, at least some staff stayed behind in all the hospitals until the patients were evacuated.
The line about staff "fleeing the hospital for fear of armed looters" is almost certainly false. The hospitals were not full of looters. They were locked down from the outside, and in some cases surrounded by water. Patients had to be evacuated from one large hospital through a hole chopped in the roof of an attached parking ramp because the street was underwater. Hospitals were evacuated because they had no power, working plumbing or air-conditioning, not because of looters.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-13 08:45 pm (UTC)If there were hospitals where staff was evacuated but patients left behind, this question had to have come up. But did that actually happen at any hospital? There were clearly patients that died due to deterioriating conditions while waiting to be evacuated, but as far as I know, at least some staff stayed behind in all the hospitals until the patients were evacuated.
The line about staff "fleeing the hospital for fear of armed looters" is almost certainly false. The hospitals were not full of looters. They were locked down from the outside, and in some cases surrounded by water. Patients had to be evacuated from one large hospital through a hole chopped in the roof of an attached parking ramp because the street was underwater. Hospitals were evacuated because they had no power, working plumbing or air-conditioning, not because of looters.