New Orleans: Nursing home deaths due to lack of resource?

db: The Yahoo/AFP report below, which is about an hour old, concerns a 'nursing home' in the parish of St. Bernard, New Orleans, where 'more than 30 patients' were discovered dead. The report goes on to state, as a matter of fact, that they were killed on August 29th - on the day the hurricane hit.

UK based Channel Four News reported out of New Orleans on 5th September - a full week later. Deficient Brain posted some WMV video files of some parts of the report - amongst those clips that were prepared but not posted was one concerning the continuing (apparently small-scale) hunt for survivors. In an interview with Bruce Jones of the New Orleans Coast Guard he had this to say concerning a call that they got that day "We got a call today from St Bernards Parish - it's a Hospice - and there's 20 people in there - and we go there and there are 10 dead and 10 that are dying. Those people were probably alive yesterday or the day before - there simply aren't enough resources."

Click here to watch 'lives that could have been saved'.wmv [8.5mb]

Now read the AFP report below:

Yahoo/AFP: A horrific glimpse of Hurricane Katrina's wrath emerged, as more than 30 patients were reportedly found dead in a suburban New Orleans nursing home overcome by floods.

At least 32 of the roughly 60 people living in the nursing home died in St. Bernard Parish, southeast of New Orleans, on August 29, when Katrina slammed into the US Gulf Coast, according to The New York Times.

St. Bernard Parish Sheriff Jack Stevens said the bodies were found Wednesday at St. Rita's Nursing Home, while 40 to 50 other people were alive and had been rescued, according to CNN.

Stevens did not provide an exact body count and the number was not added to the official death toll of 83 announced by New Orleans officials on Tuesday.

The grim discovery is likely the first of many awaiting rescuers scouring ravaged areas for bodies as officials warn that as many as 10,000 people may have died in Louisiana alone.

Louisiana police and soldiers, meanwhile, faced some difficult choices in enforcing a mandate to empty flooded New Orleans of its remaining 10,000 to 15,000 residents.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin authorized the use of force on Tuesday but, with a number of residents still awaiting voluntary evacuation, rescue teams have so far postponed physical confrontations with those determined to stay. Read more

db: So some questions naturally arise:

1. Are the 'Nursing Home' and the 'Hospice' one and the same?
2. If so why did AFP report that the victims died on 29th?

Even if the nursing home and the hospice are not the same institutions, there may well be a pattern unfolding whereby people who have died due to a 'lack of resource' in the aftermath of Katrina - as happened at the hospice - are subsequently classified as having died in the initial
flooding.

Update: As reports come in of a feared 1500 dead in St Bernard Parish alone, the chance of these reports relating to the same event is less likely.