A Louisiana coroner says the owner of a nursing home, where at least 30 died in Hurricane Katrina’s wake, had earlier refused an offer of evacuation help.

Bryan Bertucci, coroner with the St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans, said a day before Katrina hit, he made an urgent call to the owner of St. Rita’s Nursing Home, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Friday.

“I told her I had two buses and two drivers who could evacuate all 70 of her residents and take them anywhere she wanted to go,” he said.

But, he said the owner told him she had five nurses and a generator, and they were going to stay on.

On Wednesday, rescue workers began the task of removing about 30 decomposing bodies from the still-flooded nursing home, the report said. An investigation into the incident has been ordered.

At the single-story nursing home, residents confined to their beds or wheelchairs were quickly overwhelmed by the rapidly rising water, Bertucci said. As the storm raged, neighbors and firefighters rescued about 40 nurses and residents, the report said.

Bertucci said he thinks the nursing home owner survived the storm.

If this is the same nursing home...and what are the odds that is isn’t...doesn’t that cast Broussard’s tearful story in a totally new light?  And I still want to know why no one went to collect this man’s mother instead of just taking her calls daily until she died.

For that matter, how was she calling?  No one else in NOLA but emergency locations had phone service.  Did this woman in the nursing home happen to have a Verizon cell phone? (Verizon was reported to be the only carrier still working through the entire event) If it turns out Broussard made this up...I think he should answer for that.

*UPDATE*

I did some digging, and there are 5 major and six minor nursing homes in St. Bernard’s parish.  “Almost” all of them were evacuated according to the New York Times, except for St. Rita’s.  Now, there’s that word “almost” in the NYT story, so there is wiggle room, but I gotta tell you, my gut is SCREAMING that St. Rita’s is the home to which Broussard referred in his tearful story.

Going back a little...the Times-Picayune did a story on April 19th of this year about how corrupt the Louisiana nursing home system really is.  This seems unrelated until you take into account the original story that prompted this post, where the owner of St. Rita’s refused to evacuate.  How far does the problem go?  All the way up...the law is stacked in favor of the homes and against the patients and families.

*UPDATE 9/13/05*

Interesting.  I wonder if Broussard will retract his assault on the President over this very incident.  What do you bet that he never mentions it again?  Note the date of death, BTW...it makes Broussard a bold-faced liar.

The husband-and-wife owners of a nursing home near New Orleans were charged Tuesday with negligent homicide in the deaths of 34 people during the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Katrina.

The case represents the first major prosecution to come out of the disaster.

The owners of St. Rita’s Nursing Home in Chalmette “were asked if they wanted to move (the patients). They did not. They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said.

“In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients,” Foti said.

Salvador A. Mangano and his wife, Mable, surrendered and were jailed on 34 counts of negligent homicide. Each count carries up to five years in prison.

The attorney general said he is also investigating the discovery of more than 40 corpses at flooded-out Memorial Medical Center, in New Orleans’ Uptown section.

The victims at St. Rita’s died Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit, and on Sept. 6, at least 14 unrecognizable bodies were still inside the nursing home, the New York Times reported last week.

St. Bernard Parish Councilman Ricky Melerine said the water rose 3 feet in 15 minutes that morning and then even faster, the Times said.

Several men tried to rescue the nursing home’s residents by floating them out on mattresses, and others were able to walk to a school, the Times said. In all, the home had about 60 residents.

There were apparent efforts to fight the incoming water inside St. Rita’s. A table was nailed against a window and a couch was pushed up against a door, the Times said. There was also evidence that water had reached the roof.

The owners had an evacuation plan as required under state law and a contract with an ambulance service to evacuate the patients, but they did not call the company, Foti said.

They also turned down an offer from St. Bernard Parish officials who asked if the nursing home wanted help evacuating, he said. The home is about 10 miles southeast of New Orleans in an area of heavy devastation.

Foti said the bodies have not all been identified and he was not sure how many of the victims were patients or staff.

“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.”

This incident was used to fuel the flames against the federal response not AFTER the Feds arrived in LA in force, but BEFORE they had a chance to get there.  A lot of people attacked Bush specifically over this inceident and it is looking like, at least to me, that Broussard may have simply invented the daily phone calls.  Or perhaps someone lied to him, I don’t know.  All I know for sure is if the man had any integrity he’d admit that the story he’s not famous for telling on television was false.

Unfortunately, you don’t get to be a parish president in Louisiana by having integrity.

Here’s the thing to which I keep coming back: How could she have called on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday?  Everyone died on Monday, August 29th.  Even if someone lied to him when they told the story, he represented it as someone with whom he was woprking side by side...and he further paints a picture that the calls came in daily.

But...they couldn’t have.

I think people deserve an explanation.

*UPDATE 9/14/05*

Thanks to Tj for pointing out this transcript.  I think we can now safely say that Broussard made his story up.  Every fact that comes out all jibe with each other but none of them jibe with Broussard’s tearful testimony on television.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tom Rodrigue is living a nightmare. He knew his 92-year-old mother, Eva, was in deep trouble. And he was helpless to get her out of harm’s way.

TOM RODRIGUE, VICTIM’S SON: We’ve had numerous storms before, and they know that, if they evacuate, she needs to go with them.

CANDIOTTI: His mother, Eva Rodrigue lived, and apparently died, with more than 30 others in St. Rita’s Nursing Home, which was flooded after Katrina swept into New Orleans. Some were evacuated, but many were not moved to safety in time and drowned.

RODRIGUE: She didn’t have Alzheimer’s. She knew who people was. She remembered things. And she could still get around on a walker. So she wasn’t an invalid, you know? So she could move around.

CANDIOTTI: Tom Rodrigue, himself a former emergency management director for Louisiana’s National Guard, was out of town when Katrina turned toward New Orleans. He started calling the nursing home Saturday, urging that it be evacuated.

RODRIGUE: You know, they indicated they were not going to leave. CANDIOTTI: Sunday night, as Katrina struck, Rodrigue was 30 miles away directing emergency personnel for Jefferson Parish. He called the nursing home in St. Bernard Parish again, pleading with officials to get the residents out. He was told they were going to try.

RODRIGUE: I called the St. Bernard officials again and, you know, told them that, you know, they’ve got to get, you know, these people out. And they said they notified them, and that they weren’t—they refused to leave. And I said, “Well, you need to send the sheriff’s office down there and make them leave.” And he said, “I’m doing everything I can.”

CANDIOTTI: On Wednesday, 10 days after Katrina struck, authorities began removing bodies from St. Rita’s Nursing Home. Eva Rodrigue’s remains have not yet been found.

CNN has been so far unable to reach the nursing home owners to find out whether they had an evacuation plan and if the workers did all they could to clear the place out. CNN reviewed St. Rita’s records on the state’s web site. It indicates the home’s license expired last July, but we couldn’t reach state authorities to confirm that.

For Tom Rodrigue, the pain is overwhelming.

RODRIGUE: She may not have been able to withstand the ordeal, even if they would have rescued her. But she deserved the chance, you know, to be rescued, instead of having to drown like a rat.

CANDIOTTI: Susan Candiotti, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Why is no reporter in the world asking Broussard about this?