New at Gulf Watch: Nursing home neglect

Of the people hurt most by Hurricane Katrina -- poor and working-class residents, African-Americans -- especially hard-hit were the elderly. The fact that old people made up a disproportionate share of those killed in the 2005 storms was chalked up to the elderly being isolated and physically unable to outmaneuver a storm.

But there's more to the story. The elderly also suffered due to the failure of nursing homes -- an industry long bedeviled with charges of cutting corners and neglect -- to create and carry out effective evacuation plans. Sue Sturgis, a reporter for the Institute's Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch project, reveals the scope of the problem in a story this week:

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last year, it revealed serious shortcomings in nursing homes' evacuation plans.

At St. Rita's Nursing Facility in St. Bernard Parish, La., 34 residents and caregivers died after owners Salvador and Mable Mangano allegedly turned away two buses parish officials had offered before the storm, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. The couple then reportedly failed to call on an ambulance company they had contracted with to evacuate patients. The Manganos were eventually charged with negligent homicide and are awaiting trial.

Twenty-two people also died at Lafon Nursing Home of the Holy Family in eastern New Orleans, and three residents of eastern New Orleans' Ferncrest Manor Living Center died as a result of an evacuation involving school buses that lacked air-conditioning and water, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.

Sturgis points to a recent GAO study which chronicles a list of ways in which current emergency response plans don't take the needs of people in health facilities into account.

As the 2006 storm season gains steam, will leaders in Washington act to make sure the least-able among us are protected?

"As with the Katrina response, we can't let confusion and gaps in responsibility get in the way of the effectiveness of the response," U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the committee that oversees Medicare and Medicaid, said in a statement. "I urge the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies that are involved to plug the gaps in our evacuation system to ensure that some of the most frail and vulnerable among us are not left behind."