The august New York Times kindly forgave the state and local governments in Louisiana for failing
to execute on their disaster recovery plans as hurricane Katrina bowled over their state. They headlined the government response thus:
“Federal Authorities Hesitated — Local Officials Were Overwhelmed.”
And rightly so. Everyone knows that when Democrats
fail to execute, it is Republicans that are to blame.
But no such understanding is being extended to nursing home operators that ignored
warnings to evacuate their patients. Salvadore and Mable Mangano had filed an evacuation plan and had a contract
with an ambulance service to get their patients out in an emergency but they didn’t pull the trigger, according to AP reporter
David Crary.
So 34 of their patients died.
Fortunately, the Louisiana state authorities are right on the ball with this one, and have issued criminal
indictments against the couple for failing to provide a prudent level of care for their patients.
"The pathetic thing in this case was that they were asked if they wanted to
move them and they did not," said Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti. "They were warned
repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect,
their inaction resulted in the deaths of these people."
The compassion and concern shown by Louisiana state politicians for
the fate of helpless victims of rapacious nursing home operators is heartening. But the lawyer for the Manganos, Jim Cobb,
asserted that “his clients were innocent and had waited for a mandatory evacuation order
from the officials of St. Bernard Parish that never came.”
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