WIAR: Five Days At Memorial (NS)

julie37619

This book, y'all!  I can't put it down.  IT's about one of the hospitals in New Orleans that lost power and then their backup generators during Katrina - specifically the hospital where patients were killed by doctors as an "act of mercy" because they ran out of options (not a spoiler, that happens in the first pages).  It tells the story of what led to those decisions and the situation in the hospital as things continue to get worse and worse and people are trying to evacuate via helicopter and boat.  It is just horrific.  It's like reading a real life post-apocalyptic story.  What is super scary is the idea of how our country would be able to handle a widespread power loss - if it weren't just city-wide, but region or country-wide.

MrsJenE

I don't think I can handle this book.

SusieBW

I'm with MrsJenE, I think.  I remember hearing about this when it came out, and I have a little bit of morbid curiosity that makes me sort of want to read it, but then it also sort of feels like I might regret that decision.  What an awful, awful situation.

I've always wondered how it got there.  There was advance notice that the mother of all hurricanes was bearing down - wasn't there an evacuation plan?  Did they just wait too long?  I feel like a number of things had to have gone wrong for it to reach the point that it did.  Sad.

julie37619

I haven't finished the whole thing yet, but a major problem was that they had separate plans for a hurricane, a power outage, an evacuation, and a flood.  They didn't have any kind of plan for a combination of the four.  They actually thought they were ok after the hurricane passed, it was when the levees broke that things got terrible.

MrsJenE

julie37619 said:

I haven't finished the whole thing yet, but a major problem was that they had separate plans for a hurricane, a power outage, an evacuation, and a flood.  They didn't have any kind of plan for a combination of the four.  They actually thought they were ok after the hurricane passed, it was when the levees broke that things got terrible.

See?  My heart just dropped when I read this small statement.  Nope.  Call me a baby, but I can't read it.

booneybear

I am putting this on my TBR list.

SusieBW

MrsJenE said:

julie37619 said:

I haven't finished the whole thing yet, but a major problem was that they had separate plans for a hurricane, a power outage, an evacuation, and a flood.  They didn't have any kind of plan for a combination of the four.  They actually thought they were ok after the hurricane passed, it was when the levees broke that things got terrible.

See?  My heart just dropped when I read this small statement.  Nope.  Call me a baby, but I can't read it.

Meanwhile, it sort of makes me want to read it.  Natural disasters fascinate me, but more from a scientific perspective than a human perspective.  Emergency planning and operations is a small part of my job (though I've thankfully never had to be involved in a response), so I'm always a little interested in stuff like this.  But this story is all so heartbreaking. . . the entire Katrina situation was all so heartbreaking.

pizzo84

I loved it! Couldn't put it down either. I work as an RN and would not stop talking about this book at work either. I did a google search too, and it was interesting to see some actual pictures of the hospital and staff. Best book  I've read in a LONG time.