Katrina Horrors
The eight-part miniseries Five Days at Memorial on the AppleTV+ streaming service is based on the book by the same name written by Sheri Fink in 2013. The first five of the hour-long episodes recreates the eponymous five days at New Orleans’s Memorial Medical Center hospital that lost power and was partially flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in late August of 2005. The questions explored by the book and the series revolve around the complex human actions at the hospital that led to the deaths of 45 patients.
As you might imagine, thanks to CGI and the professional production, recreating the storm and the squalor of its aftermath are visually stunning. When the municipal power fails and the hospital has to make due with backup generators, the electricity is insufficient to power the climate control. The series does an effective job of showing the stifling heat and sweatiness that compounded the misery of a dark building with clogged sewage. Then the auxiliary power fails after breeched levees flood the basement generators, rendering the high-tech life-support systems inoperable.
Meanwhile, we watch as hospital staff attempt to contact the outside world for instruction, information, and help. The corporate management hierarchy has no plans in place to deal with any of this, and aid is at best delayed, coming in fits and starts. Although the series doesn’t spend much time recreating the government’s actions and failures, it is clear that no one is in charge until some rather aggressive officers from the Louisiana hospital oversight authorities arrive to tell hospital personnel they have a mere day to get everyone removed from the premises in a single shift on the last day, even though bed-ridden patients would have to be hand-carried down as much as seven flights in dark stairwells.
Most of the drama in the first five episodes depicts the actions of three main female characters: Dr. Anna Pou (played by Vera Farmiga), nursing chief Susan Mulderick (Cherry Jones), and director of the LifeCare unit Diane Robichaux (Julie Ann Emery). The women are shown as they aid patients, although in the case of Dr. Pou, the decision-making on the last day became a matter of criminal investigation for second-degree manslaughter. She had determined that the authorities were forcing hospital caregivers to abandon suffering patients completely, and began injecting the ones who were hardest to move with a combination of drugs to ease their pain—and to euthanize them.
The final three episodes portray the subsequent investigations of the deaths at Memorial over the next couple of years, mainly by following the Louisiana Assistant Attorney General Arthur “Butch” Schafer and his deputy Special Agent Virginia Rider as they piece together the facts. Schafer decides early on to focus on one individual’s actions, in this case Dr. Pou as the one who administered the injections. The team turn up a lot of evidence, and Dr. Pou at the same time realizes she is going to be the sole individual held accountable for a system that failed at every level, leading her to the choices she felt she was forced to make.
The whole series serves as a great reminder of our collective obsessions nearly two decades ago. It also approaches the people and events with the aim of being fair to everyone, even as Dr. Pou’s case looks especially difficult to justify after the fact. There really are no simple or simplistic villains offered up, and (thankfully) the partisan political statements about local, state, and national elected officials are mostly set aside. The decisions made on site after communications failed were not phoned in from anyone on high, after all.
My sole complaint about the production is that the editing was a bit off a few times—enough to draw attention to the bad cuts.
Five Days at Memorial is a good dramatization, and a compelling detailed portrayal of history within living memory. I would recommend it to anyone who has AppleTV+ or wants to use a free trial to binge the show.
Heads up..Susan Rice leaving Biden WH..scenario..she manages a campaign for M.Obama.
Just wondering.Thoughts?
Well, the Tucker news was a shock...seriously, I can't wait for this story to develop and find out what really happened here, they didn't even let him say goodbye to his audience...and if it is what he did, they knew he was doing this and they could have told him to stop...but, I also read his dissing the management was a factor in those emails
Today is Bucket List Day, and Pigs in a blanket Day...I made new bucket list in celebration and then got depressed because I am losing faith I will never do any of those things for various reasons...sigh...Pigs in a blanket are ok, I prefer hot dog buns though...lol
Afternoon everyone ( sorry I couldn't make it in the morning), when I left the house this morning we had these massive wet snowflakes ( was supposed to be on the forties and just rain) , they melted right away when they hit the pavement, but they looked kinda cool falling, but,. also, it was like slush all over my windshield...lol...
I hate Mondays...