- This is the nursing home, where all the senior citizens
perished. This is the place that President Aaron Broussard, of Jefferson
Parish (comparable to a county commissioner), spoke of, on Meet the Press,
Sept 4-2005. This is the nursing home, where trapped seniors in wheelchairs
and the bedridden waited for Homeland Defense - Waited for Brown of FEMA
- waited for local - state - federal officials - waited for the President
and died waiting.
-
- No employees were found with the patients. They DIED
in Super Power USA. They died alone in the dark, as the waters kept rising
- and, by God, I can't, I just can't understand why this whole damn country
isn't sobbing. Just like Mr. Broussard did (yes, thankfully some men still
cry) when he heard the man who ran the Emergency Center tell his mother
(a resident of this nursing home) on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
- over and over - when she called: "We're coming Momma - we'll be
there Momma - we're on our way Momma!"
-
- And then, on Friday, there were no more calls because
they'd all drowned.
-
- What the hell is wrong with people - listening to this
bullshit of back to school - Mandy found her mother - dogs being rescued
- and the Press Secretary...that lap dog dufus, brainless cretin McCleland
saying: "We're not going to play the blame game."
-
- Chertoff (an attorney - no experience in disaster) of
Homeland Defense said on Sept 4 on Meet the Press with Broussard: "Time
is of the essence, they'll be plenty of time to chop heads off afterwards."
-
-
-
-
-
- Really - well, not for these seniors, the most vulnerable
in our society, who COULDN'T walk out or drive out of New Orleans to a
distant Hilton! Bush was delivering a cake to McCain - golfing - doing
the VJ day gig - and looking down, from Air Force One, as these folks drowned.
-
- "We're coming Moma - we're coming." Sometimes
I have to stop writing and just cry.
-
- Condi was playing tennis, shopping for $1000 footwear,
and attending a Monty Python comedy about the Holy Grail. Cheney went fishing
in Jackson Hole - lounged around his trophy home, while Lynn - shopped
for a 10 acre estate on Chesapeake Bay. Nobody heard the seniors crying
- nor the depraved - criminal - negligence. "We're coming Momma."
Nobody came. But the President is going to find out what went right and
what went wrong.
-
- The Black Shepherds and Black Caucus are as useless as
the rest of them. Rested up from vacation, they're now going to start their
race-baiting game, which is all the hell they're good for. Well, it's too
late. These seniors, those in Charity hospitals, in group homes, in hospice
care are all dead.
-
- Thousands and thousands of people are dead, jobless,
and homeless. Meanwhile, our 'leaders' with their obscene salaries, multiple
homes and secure pensions are going to see, one again, how they can learn
from their mistakes. Right, sure, and we're going to rebuild Iraq? We can't
even maintain a levee - or rescue some old folks. What a joke.
-
-
- Comment
- Henry in Canada
- 9-11-5
-
- Ms. Moriarty:
-
- I read your article. I found it.....where else...? on
rense.com
-
- I gotta tell you... I am a man. A 56 year-old man. And....yes...I
am crying after reading your article.
-
- What is this goddamn xxxxxxx world coming to? Pardon
my french. What's this world coming to?
-
- We ALL better wake-up soon, for there will be nothing
left.
-
- GET THIS MOTHERF***INGASSHOLEBASTARD OUT of his office....
and his neocon cabal, too......pardon my french....again... but I'm mad
AS HELL...HERE. Boy, am I mad!!!! God help us all....even in Canada....where
I am now. I cannot express my anger. I just can't. I am REALLY MAD....HERE.
-
- But what can I do?
- Comment
D.J. Owen
DJO@hotmail.com
9-20-5
-
- Oh, what a crock! I'm addressing "We're Coming Mama,"
By Judith Moriarty. See (http://www.rense.com/general67/coming.htm)
-
- The chronology of the phone calls described by Broussard
came under particular scrutiny by bloggers. This crying dude lied his butt
off.....and i think Judith needs to address this in her "oh, so acerbic"
way! The following demonstrates just how ridiculous it is when someone
like Moriarty pops off, without facts, and runs with something as irresponsibly
as a child with scissors!
-
- Story of a mother's desperate calls from nursing home
skewed
Updated: 10:55 a.m. ET
Sept. 19, 2005
-
- WASHINGTON - The Jefferson
Parish president's emotional retelling of a mother's desperate calls from
a New Orleans nursing home included details that conflict with the timeline
of the tragedy.
-
- The story, of a colleague's mother begging her son for
rescue as flood waters rose after Hurricane Katrina, came to prominence
on Sunday, Sept. 4, when Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish
in New Orleans, was interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press.
(MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
-
- New details and interviews with the son whose mother
died in the flood show that the tragedy unfolded from Saturday through
Monday, Aug. 29 - not Monday through Friday, Sept. 2 as recounted by Broussard.
The owners of the nursing home were indicted Tuesday for the deaths of
more than 30 residents, which officials say occurred on Aug. 29.
-
- In the course of the interview, in which Broussard was
expressing frustration with the slow-footed response by the federal government
to the hurricane, he related the personal story of a man whose mother had
died in the flooding caused by Katrina. Broussard, who did not identify
the man by name at the time, broke down in tears as he related the story.
As the Meet the Press transcript shows, Russert paused the interview to
allow Broussard to compose himself.
-
- BROUSSARD: ... The guy who runs this building I'm in,
emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped
in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are
you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama,
somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday.
Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you
on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned
Friday night. She drowned Friday night.
-
- RUSSERT: Mr. President...
-
- BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming
to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had
press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut
up and send us somebody.
-
- RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. President. While you
gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to
Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
-
- Since the broadcast of the interview, which elevated
Broussard to national prominence, a number of bloggers have questioned
the validity of Broussard's story.
-
- Subsequent reporting identified the man whom Broussard
was referring to in the Meet the Press interview as Thomas Rodrigue, the
Jefferson Parish emergency services director. Contacted on Friday by MSNBC.com,
Rodrigue acknowledged that his 92-year-old mother and more than 30 other
people died in the St. Rita nursing home. They had not been evacuated and
the flood waters overtook the residence.
-
- The chronology of the phone calls described by Broussard
came under particular scrutiny by bloggers.
-
- Rodrigue said he didn't see or hear Broussard's comments
on Meet the Press. When told of the sequence of phone calls that Broussard
described on Meet the Press, Rodrigue said "No, no, that's not true."
-
- "I can't tell you what he said that day, why he
was confused, I'm assuming he was under a tremendous amount of pressure,"
Rodrigue told MSNBC.
-
- "I contacted the nursing home two days before the
storm [on Aug. 27th] and again on the 28th of August," Rodrigue said.
"At the same time I talked to the nursing home I also talked to the
emergency manager for St. Bernard Parish," Rodrigue said, "to
encourage that nursing home to evacuate like they were supposed to and
they didn't until it was too late."
-
- Broussard must have been confused "because I was
calling, not my mother calling me, I was calling her," Rodrigue said.
Further, Rodrigue says he never made any calls after Monday, the day he
figures his mother died, based on conversations he's had with another person
who had a family member perish inside St. Rita's. Officials believe that
the residents of St. Rita's died on Monday, Aug. 29, not on Friday, Sept.
2, as Broussard had suggested.
-
- Broussard could not be reached for comment Friday, but
Jackie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Broussard who was present during the Meet
the Press interview, said "it was a misunderstanding."
-
- Late on Friday, Bauer told MSNBC.com: "I was there
when he (Broussard) was doing that, when he was saying that, I think he
was meaning that he was calling, he was calling and trying to talk to Tommy
and telling him 'don't worry,' trying to console Tommy, 'don't worry, we'll
get her out, don't worry we'll get her out.'"
-
- When asked how Broussard could have gotten the details
of his mother's story so wrong, Rodrigue said, Broussard "was emotional,
absolutely and he was from the time that he found out that, you know, that
my mother had died and I was here doing what I'm required to do for the
citizens for Jefferson Parish."
-
- Rodrigue said he hasn't spoken with Broussard since the
Meet the Press broadcast. "He's been busy, I've been busy," Rodrigue
said. "I haven't really had a chance to sit down and talk to him."
-
- The husband and wife owners of St. Rita's nursing home
in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette have been charged with homicide
in the case.
-
- "The pathetic thing in this case was that they were
asked if they wanted to move them and they did not," Louisiana Attorney
General Charles Foti said Tuesday. "They were warned repeatedly that
this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths
of these people."
-
- "They had a duty and a standard of care to people
who could not care for themselves," Foti said of the owners. "If
you or I decided we are going to stay, we do it of our own free will. ...
The people at the nursing home don't have that choice."
-
- "Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home when
it should have been evacuated. I cannot say it any plainer than that,"
Foti said, his voice rising with anger. © 2005 MSNBC Interactive
-
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9368952
-
-
- Comment
KW
9-21-5
-
- I'd just like to comment on the statements by D.J. Owen.
Owen says the story by Broussard is total rubbish because he got the days
wrong, even commenting he was wrong most likely because he was under a
tremendous amount of pressure. What does it matter if the chronology is
out by a few days, people died due to incompetence. Owen also states the
son of the woman, Rodrigues, said "he never made any calls after Monday...
based on conversations he's had with another person who had a family member
perish inside St. Rita's." If someone told you there were deaths where
your mom is staying would you then ignore any chance to see if they escaped
or would you try as hard as possible to find what if they're possibly still
alive? Just a thought.
-
- K.W.
- Sydney.
-
-
- Reply
D.J. Owen
- DJO@hotmail.com
-
- KW,
-
- First of all, those aren't my "comments" about
the story. You are referring to quotes from the MSNBC article.
-
- Broussard was railing against FEMA not coming in to help.
He based his claims on a story about someone calling for help from a nursing
home for four days. This didn't happen.
-
- Maybe Mr. Broussard should be invited back on Meet the
Press to explain just how and where FEMA failed, since the original basis
for his claim had been discredited.
-
- It follows that Judith Moriarty's "commentary"
is flawed, also. But apparently her story is enough to make grown men
cry.
-
- I'm not suggesting that FEMA performed flawlessly.....but
we can either try to get the facts straight about this whole Katrina mess
or we will never be able to attempt to fix the problems. And should grown
men be crying over falsehoods?
-
- By the way, Rodrigue is the Jefferson Parish emergency
services director and a former firefighter. Since firefighters were helping
evacuate those who did get out of the flooded nursing home, I think it's
safe to assume that he knew rather quickly what was going on with his mom.
I think it's also safe to assume that he was rather busy at the time,
and did not abandon his duties as some of the NOPD reportedly did.
|
