What really happened at St. Rita's? - Yahoo! News:
What passes for high ground in Louisiana's southeastern marshlands are the patches of terra firma that did not flood during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.
St. Rita's Nursing Home was built 20 years ago on one of those patches. That figured prominently in the decision by Sal and Mabel Mangano, St. Rita's owners, to ride out Hurricane Katrina in their one-story brick building rather than follow an order by St. Bernard Parish to evacuate the home's 60 residents. The Manganos even invited their relatives, staffers and the staff's relatives to use St. Rita's as a shelter, and nearly 30 people accepted the offer
State law requires licensed nursing homes to file evacuation plans with the local government. But the law does not require the plans to be followed during an emergency, and it does not require nursing home operators to follow mandatory evacuation orders.
"The law is silent on those two issues," says Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, a fact that would appear to help the Manganos' defense.
Likewise, Louisiana's requirement that nursing homes have an evacuation plan does not require an actual evacuation. The law allows nursing homes to "evacuate" to "a safe place" within the home.
St. Rita's evacuation plan called for residents to be taken to Baton Rouge or Lafayette in two stages, with the most infirm residents to go 48 to 72 hours before a hurricane, and the rest to go 24 to 48 hours before a storm. Despite several conversations before the hurricane with Bertucci, other parish officials and relatives of residents about evacuating, the Manganos did not follow their written plan.
