FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL is two books in one. The first relates, through the eyes of those present, the happenings at Memorial Hospital during and after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Louisiana. The nurses, doctors, visitors and patients tell their stories as they happened with the result that it is sometimes difficult to follow the time line of events as the story shifts from floor to floor and person to person. Nonetheless the horror and fear is palpable as the storm rages and then as flood waters rise trapping those in the hospital for five days of increasing confusion and deprivation. No one appears in charge. No one appears to aid those trapped. Help is not on the way. Decisions are made and rescinded. Offers of help are sent, but do not arrive.
When help finally does arrive, many of the patients are dead and fingers begin to point.
The second part of the book covers the investigations into the allegations of murder or, more charitably, euthanasia, the resultant trial and the aftermath of the verdicts. FIVE DAYS is chilling reading, all the more so because of Fink’s straight forward reporting style. She makes no conclusions of her own, simply letting the participants words and actions speak.
Book groups will find many topics for discussion including euthanasia, DNR directives, patient/doctor relations, decision making in times of extreme distress, preparedness for disaster and governmental readiness.

Fink has taken an unpleasant topic and written a most pleasing account. She tells the story through the eyes and ears of those who lived the drama. The book does not get bogged down in medical or legal language. The book could benefit from the addition of a timeline. The story reaches a satisfying conclusion, except what happened to the animals sheltered at Memorial. Did they make it out?

FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL is nonfiction the way I wish all nonfiction books were: detailed without letting the details get in the way of an honest-to-gosh edge-of-your-seat story. This is an outstanding book, and any description of it won\\\'t do it justice.

You may think you know this story of New Orleans\\\' Memorial Hospital, its staff and patients, during and after Hurricane Katrina. But there\\\'s so much you don\\\'t, and it looks like Sheri Fink, the author of FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL, has done the digging for us and found it all. And her presentation won\\\'t bore you, either. Yet all the details are there, with a journalist\\\'s skill of maintaining objectivity; Fink gives us no opinion, just the facts.

The first half of FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL is the five days at Memorial, hard to stomach but necessary to really understand what doctors and nurses were faced with and what patients, particularly the severely ill, endured. The second half involves mostly how various staff (doctors, nurses, therapists, etc.) reacted to their experience and presented their reactions to law enforcement, newspaper reporters, medical societies, etc. And we can also finally understand what went on with the intended prosecution of one of the doctors, how the media influenced the outcome.

During a book event with Sheri Fink that I attended at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield, Michigan, she stated that this story all comes down to how ill-prepared our hospitals are for emergencies such as this hurricane. Of course, that\\\'s true. But it might not be enough to entice you to pick up the book.

Really, it\\\'s about so much more than that. And you want to read it; you really do. Not many books of nonfiction do more than make you smarter. FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL will grab you until the end. And you won\\\'t want it to end. Gees, I\\\'m hoping the paperback will continue the Epilogue.

It is very frustrating to read about the incompetence, disorganization, and unnecessary death and suffering that was scapegoated upon the shoulders of those who gave the most and did the best they could under circumstances that were beyond their control when Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, with a ferocity beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Who are we to judge those who actually sacrificed themselves, during Katrina, because the rescue effort didn’t work out quite as well as we hoped or some didn’t survive that we thought should or would have. We were not in the shoes of these caregivers and rescuers. We can’t know what they were thinking or why they did whatever they did. We can’t know the pressure, the fear, the lack of ordinary necessities, the concerns for the suffering, the sounds of the gunshots that led the medical staff to make the decisions they made. What we can know is that many decisions leading to the loss of life were also made on the basis of cowardice, greed, and concerns about money, rather than on the efficacy of the plan in place.
At every turn, once the crisis was over, someone sought to blame someone else, whether it was the President, the Governor, the Mayor, the corporations, the nurses, the doctors, in essence, anything but themselves, anything but the looters, anything but those who turned a blind eye and sat in their ivory towers of safety, judging those who put their lives on the line for others, anything but those who chose, over the years, not to fix what was broken, not to insure the safety of the levies and the citizens, anything not to blame nature which was ultimately the sole cause of the tragedy. The situation in New Orleans was an accident waiting to happen, and it did.
During the storm, everything broke down. There was a complete lack of credible communication in an atmosphere of total disorganization. Rumors were the order of the day. They heard there was martial law, they heard there were snipers, they heard there was looting, they heard there would be no more rescues; they were told lies and contradictory information over and over. They lost hope. Equipment failed, the water supply dwindled and disappeared, the hygiene facilities were hopelessly lacking to serve the needs of all those in need and soon broke down, overflowed and stopped performing. Generators failed, power failed, there was no air conditioning, elevators stopped, life support machinery stopped working. Someone had to do perform the job of the machines for the many patients in need and this was exhausting work. The Memorial hospital staff was soon worn out, stretched to their limits. The Super Dome, where evacuees were sent, soon became overcrowded and dangerous. Fights broke out, looting was commonplace (and shame on those looters, on the lowlifes who took advantage of this tragedy to prey on the weak). The marauders inhibited the rescues. Some rescuers were coldhearted, randomly choosing those to be saved. It seems barbaric, in retrospect, but they were all overworked, fearful and unsure of how to exactly proceed. Efficient plans were not in place, and where they were, they were not always enforced.
Monday morning quarterbacks may decide what should or shouldn’t have been done, but they should have been there, if they wanted to pass judgment, so they could understand the decisions that were made. The witch hunt that followed the storm destroyed lives. In future emergencies, doctors and nurses, medical aides and law enforcement officers may think twice before they volunteer their services. Those that sat in judgment, those that pointed fingers were safe behind their walls and windows while the medical personnel who risked their lives to save strangers with the limited supplies that were available, were held up for extra scrutiny. Medical staff and patients alike, feared being abandoned by the system, and when fear makes the decision, it is not always the best, but it is often the most expedient.
Because communication had broken down, the staff had little accurate information and they could not reach their own families; they were terribly concerned for their own welfare, as well. Medications and necessary supplies were not delivered. When they reached out for help, they were often offered it only to find it was rescinded. Was their final solution euthanasia or compassionate medicine? Were they offering extreme comfort in extreme circumstances, or were they offering an end to the suffering, even going so far as speeding up death when a patient had no quality of life and was being tormented? If they were ordered to leave, could they simply abandon their patients or should they put them out of their misery when they were told there was no hope for their rescue. Was someone lying to them? Were they deluding themselves because of their exhaustion? The situation was alternately described as a war zone and as Dante’s Inferno, so who could blame those who eventually succumbed to the pressure.
In actuality, what the prosecutors wanted was to punish the medical staff for shortening the term of the palliative care already being administered to most of the patients who died. Palliative care does not improve the condition of the patient; it merely makes the patient comfortable. It does not extend life, it merely maintains it. We have come a long way in just a few short years since Katrina since what is the main platform of Obamacare, in order to curb costs, under the guise of making it easier for families to care for those “terminally” ill, as all old people are? It is long term palliative care, long term euthanasia. Expedience rules in extreme circumstances.
Pulitzer prize-winning author, Sheri Fink researched the history of the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, as a prelude to the description of the tragedy of Katrina in New Orleans. Politics and the economy played a part in the ultimate tragedy. She revealed the lack of maintenance for the levies and the inadequate preparation for such a major weather event, although they had been warned over and over again of what might happen in the event of a catastrophic failure. Everyone was complicit in this massive, tragic failure, because everyone knew for years and years that the levies were weak, that they were not built to stand a catastrophic hurricane, and yet, money was never allocated, or if it was, it was never used for the repair and rebuilding of the inadequate structures, but rather diverted to other uses deemed more important or economically advisable
It turned out that the penny wise and dollar foolish attitude of the governing bodies making the decisions not to spend the money on shoring up the dams and levies, was a monumental error. Looters and darkness inhibited rescue attempts and sometimes canceled them. Those in greatest need were abandoned as triage took on a new meaning. Only the ambulatory and well would be evacuated first at Memorial. This was contradictory to all previous methods for usually the most ill and the most in need were treated first. Those with DNR’s were sacrificed even if they were not facing imminent death. There was only so much oxygen, so much medicine, so many nurses. In some cases family stayed and helped, but in the end, with martial law declared, they were forced to evacuate and leave loved ones,under armed guard. Care had to be rationed. Doctors and hospice nurses do kill people to ease their suffering and/or to ease their own. They did what was expedient. Is this what the staff did during Katrina? Is it excusable under the circumstances? Were all the victims at the end of their lives? Who has the right to decide the moment of death? The triage situation was brutal. The patients were numbered, color coded as to who was to be rescued first, who last, who not at all. Some helicopter pilots refused to take bedbound patients, some couldn’t fly at night. There were hundreds of people at the hospital. When they were rescued, they were often taken to places far afield, with no one knowing their whereabouts. It was Hell on Earth for those caught in this maelstrom.
In the end, it was also about money. Whose responsibility was it to remove the decaying bodies, who would pay the victim’s families, who would repair the homes, who would provide the resources to rebuild New Orleans, who would have the foresight to make sure that whatever repairs were made were not substandard but were superior so that this could never happen again. The names of the doctors brought up on charges are known, the names of the victims of possible euthanasia are surmised. The names of the lawyers and DA’s and Attorney Generals looking to foster their careers are all in the public record. Their names are unimportant. What is important is not pointing fingers at someone else, or seeking rewards from the devastation nature wrought. What is important is preventing nature and government and corporations and people themselves from allowing this to happen again, by avoiding the very responsibility that responsible citizens should have in maintaining their own safety and surroundings, by instead, taking on the mantle of accountability and not avoiding a personal duty to do the right thing, or vote for the people who will. George Herbert English said living well is the best revenge, that should be everyone’s motto, but not at the expense of someone else.
At the end of the book the author covered the reactions to the natural disaster in Haiti with their devastating earthquake which left thousands homeless and dead, and the devastating effects of hurricane Sandy on parts of New Jersey. The reader will decide if the response to those events shows that anything was learned from Katrina.
Written like a thriller, it is a riveting depiction of the storm and its aftermath. It is almost impossible to be prepared for all events, but, in this case, it would seem little effort was made, in advance. Even when the evacuation order was given, it was too late, it was not enforceable and it was inadequate. The people in charge were covering their derrieres and not doing what had to be done to guarantee safety.
Sheri Fink slowly develops the characters that were involved in this horrendous incident. She presents information both for and against their behavior in an unbiased, clearheaded manner. She exposes the shortcomings of the information system during the crisis. It was not dispensed in a timely fashion nor was it often correct. The doctors, nurses and patients were largely abandoned by all the services, the state, and by nature. The supplies needed were just unavailable, were in different locations or were simply in too short supply. The best laid plans of mice and men went asunder!

This wonderfully written book about the patients, families, and staff of Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina is an outstanding account of their experiences. Sheri Fink raises legal, medical, ethical, and moral issues. It investigates the responses of the government, police, and hospital administration, among other institutions, to a natural disaster. For all the deadly serious issues this book raises, it is never dry or boring, but always fascinating and thought provoking. I highly recommend this book.

Very well written.

Since all of us in Louisiana lived through the tragedy in one way or another of Hurricane Katrina this was a very difficult book to read. It showed people at their worst not some of the good things that happened. It also brought back sad memories of that time in our history that perhaps we are still not ready to relive.

A truly amazing story but unfortunately, the author took way too long to tell it. Too many details, which was made more challenging by such a depressing story. Read like the longest newspaper article I had ever read. Virtually our entire book club bowed out because they could not get to the end of the book

Sheri Fink\\\'s book was filled with an enormous amount of interesting facts but the bottom line appeared to slant toward the guilt of Dr. Anna Poe and the 2 nurses who were brave enough to stay and deal with the patients that were abandoned by everyone else. The numerous people presented and the minute details of their lives made the book very long and redundant. The book lends itself to discussions of many end of life issues which was an interesting topic for book club, but the book itself was tedious and biased, despite Fink\\\'s claim to be non-biased. Clubs should read memorialhospitaltruth.com for interesting comments from Dr. Poe.

Unbelievably well researched bringing important information to light about this hospital and its "population" during and after Katrina.

It was a difficult subject; life and death in a hospital after a disaster and chaotic decisions made that seemed adjacent to a war zone. It was frustrating to realize the lack of organization there. This made for a good discussion.