This book was a bit of a slog to get through, not going to lie. I distinctly remember this Hurricane in live time - the pictures of people sitting on their roofs and the roof of the SuperDome being ripped off piece by piece. How we treated people and how unprepared we were were also laid bare for the world to see. What was horrific was the story that Sherri Fink told about allegations of euthanasia in hospitals, notably Memorial Hospital.
When the levees broke, things got bad at the hospital - it wasn't the storm so much as the flooding. The hospital lost its backup generators, which were located within the flood zone. AC and lighting and life support systems went out. Gunfire outside was heard and the parent company of the hospital wasn't very responsive to requests for help. Staffers began to believe that the most critical patients weren't going to survive at all. So two doctors - John Thiele and Anna Pou - injected patients with morphine and sedatives that rose to a lethal level. Approximately one year later, they were charged with murder for their roles. Most of the public and the grand jury agreed that the parent company should be the ones held responsible, not the doctors, who many felt were left without a choice.
I appreciated Fink's meticulous research - she obviously did her homework. But often, the names and actions were confusing to me and I had to keep jumping back and forth to remind myself who was who, doing what and when. It's easy to forget that this is only five days because the part of the book about the actual days seemed to drag - although that may have been the point. The book moved very, very slowly. I also wish that fink provided her own opinion about what had happened. Did one person or group of people get it right or not?
Important read but not one I'm adding to my library.
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