Wings of a Bird

Where hundreds died -- under medical care - N.Y. Times
... Autopsies have not been conducted, but many [New Orleans] hospitals said patients were elderly, in organ failure or had just had serious surgery. When the power went down, they had to endure days of 110-degree temperatures with high humidity, and the most desperate had to be manually ventilated - air squeezed into their lungs by hand for hours at a time.
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Other hospitals were not as lucky. Methodist was on the low-lying east side ... [and] tried to evacuate 20 critically ill patients ... but no ambulances were available. ...After the levees broke, five feet of water filled Methodist's reception area within 15 minutes. Fires started when the main generator shorted out. But people kept arriving. "We had one woman who was a post-op kidney transplant swim in," she said.
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... top officials at Universal Health Services, the company that runs the hospital, that they had rented two trucks with food, water and diesel fuel and sent them on, "but they were confiscated by federal authorities," she said. The company also hired two helicopters, but officials refused to let them fly, she said.
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A police officer who is the husband of a Methodist nurse made his way home to get his boat and Jet Ski. On his way back, she said, federal authorities commandeered the Jet Ski for attic rescues but let him keep the boat, with which he brought food, water and dry clothes.
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Dr. Thomas, who was born at Charity Hospital, said the next four days "were as close as I've gotten to the third world. I felt like I was in a war zone."
About 60 flood survivors wandered in, and he gave them a lounge to sleep in and paper scrubs to wear. But after a day, "they started to complain - they got rowdy about the heat, and finally they got threatening, saying they wanted to eat, and wanted to eat before our staff did. They threatened our nurses with physical harm."
Shooting outside became regular and, at one point, he said "four guys went past us in a hot tub, paddling with two-by-fours. They had guns and two floating boxes with their loot."
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Dr. Thomas said he first put his neonatal babies in boats with their mothers and some doctors, "but they were turned around at gunpoint by Tulane police officers," he said. ...