New Orleans deaths haunt the living

NEW ORLEANS - Photographs of the elderly men and women on the nursing home's bedroom walls showed them in happier times: posing with grandchildren, their spouses and their pets.

Everything else spoke of a nightmarish death.

Wheelchairs, beds and walking frames were overturned, thick sludge lined the floor. A water line 2.1m up the wall was evidence of the chaos and terror that must have engulfed St Rita's nursing home as it filled with water, 34 residents unable to escape and left alone to die.

The owners, Mable and Salvador Mangano, have been charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide for leaving the patients when Hurricane Katrina tore into New Orleans.

Yesterday at the home in the suburban parish of St Bernard, the names of the dead were still on most of the bedroom doors.

Apart from the pictures on the walls, other framed photographs lay in the sludge alongside stuffed animals, dolls, clothes and flowers.

Nurses at hospitals in and around New Orleans made heroic efforts to keep their patients alive as the floodwaters rose and power failures knocked out life-support equipment.

But prosecutors allege the victims at St Rita's were simply abandoned.

The lawyer for the Manganos said they evacuated dozens of other patients and did everything they could for those who died.

The modest, barn-shaped building had at least 50 rooms, each able to house two patients.

There was no way of telling who survived, and who died.

In one room, a sign above one patient's bed noted that she was unable to put weight on her right leg.

"Please assist her as needed," it said. It was not clear if she received that help when she most needed it.

The 34 deaths caused fresh outrage over the failure of rescue efforts after the hurricane sent floodwaters rushing into New Orleans and some of its suburbs.

Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley has asked the federal Government to investigate the deaths, and said there were reports that similar tragedies took another 28 lives at two other nursing homes in the city.

"The abuse and neglect visited upon the most vulnerable among us is shameful," he said.

"The utter disrespect for the life and dignity of the frail and elderly is nearly incomprehensible."

The Katrina death toll rose to 708 yesterday after Louisiana confirmed another 51 deaths.

- REUTERS