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Nursing Home Deaths

	Times-Picayune Still at Work This photo by Chris Granger shows one room at St. Rita’s where a body was found nearly two weeks after hurricane struck. Granger has a gallery of photos from St. Rita’s among several photo galleries provided at www.nola.com/katrinaphotos/. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, providing news on nola.com, printed their newspaper today at the Mobile Register in Alabama. They had been printing a smaller version in Houma, Louisiana, at the Houma Courier. The Times-Picayune is providing continuous updates on the Hurricane Katrina crisis at NOLA.com. Today’s story in SeniorJournal.com is taken from a Weblog by the newspaper available by clicking here.

St. Rita’s Owners Say No Help Offered Before Katrina Hit

"They're heroes, not criminals," says attorney

By Paul Rioux, St. Bernard bureau
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Sept. 15,2005 - A day after the owners of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home were booked in the deaths of 34 residents who died when the facility flooded during Hurricane Katrina, the couple's attorney painted a scene of desperation where staffers tried valiantly to stave off the storm and frantically began rescuing residents when water raged into the building.

James Cobb, a New Orleans attorney representing Mable B. Mangano, 62, and her husband, Salvador A. Mangano, 65, said the Manganos are "heroes" and called their arrest a "rush to misjudgment."

Parish officials scoffed at the notion.

The Manganos, owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home near Poydras, were booked Tuesday on 34 counts of negligent homicide. Authorities say the nursing home ignored the parish's mandatory evacuation order and refused offers by the parish to send buses to evacuate the facility.

The Manganos, who were released on their own recognizance, were not available for comment Wednesday. But Cobb, speaking on their behalf, said they described to him a hellish scene in which torrents of water consumed the home within 20 minutes. He said the Manganos also dispute that the parish made an offer to help them evacuate as Katrina bore down Aug. 29.

Cobb said the Manganos told him it wasn't even raining after the storm when they went outside, but that they heard some noise and saw water coming toward the home. "The water kept coming and coming to the point they had to bust out the windows and float out patients on their mattresses," he said.

Inside the home Wednesday, muck 6 to 8 inches deep covered the floor. Furniture, wheelchairs and mattresses appeared tossed about as if in an explosion, testament to the flood's power. A water mark smirched the wall above most doorways. Oddly, in room after room along the long main hallway, pictures of residents' loved ones still hung on walls, seemingly undisturbed.

Cobb said the home had never flooded before, not even during Hurricane Betsy in 1965. He blamed levee breaks - not the lack of an early evacuation - for the deaths.

He said the Manganos and others at the home scrambled to get boats, in some cases shooting locks off nearby gates, to help save 52 people. Of those, 24 were residents; the others were staffers and their families.

"They're heroes, not criminals," Cobb said. "Somebody ought to be giving them medals."

Cobb disputed that St. Bernard coroner Bryan Bertucci offered two buses to evacuate residents before the worst of the storm hit. Cobb said the Manganos said they spoke with Bertucci before the storm, but that it was a routine conversation about removing the body of a woman who had died earlier of natural causes.

But parish and state officials say the home is to blame for the 34 deaths.

State Attorney General Charles Foti, in announcing the arrests Tuesday, said the home is required by law to follow a mandatory evacuation plan filed with parish government for hurricanes stronger that Category 2. Katrina made landfall as a Category 4.

Told of Cobb's reference to the Manganos as heroes, Larry Ingargiola, St. Bernard Parish's director of emergency preparedness, flashed his middle finger and asked a reporter: "Can you quote this in your paper?"