The Boston Globe looks inside Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans
“As flood waters rose in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s fury, Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans ran out of the diesel fuel that powered its generators. Gunfire crackled in the streets, sometimes aimed at the rescue helicopters and boats that arrived only intermittently. Food stocks were running low, and toilets were overflowing.

In the harrowing days after the storm, hospital staff members broke windows with two-by-fours and set up ”fan brigades” to keep air moving by hand, according to detailed accounts by a doctor and a hospital official. They rationed food until meals were down to only bagels and jam. They hotwired an orthopedist’s boat and siphoned gas for it from cars in the parking lot to evacuate staff, patients, and their family members.

Dr. John J. Kokemor, 53, said he spent three days helping to evacuate people, deciding who could walk well enough to leave by water, which required wading two blocks from the boat to safety, and who needed helicopter evacuation.

Louisiana officials said yesterday that they are investigating what happened at Memorial, where 45 bodies were recovered. Kokemor, who specializes in internal medicine, strongly defended the hospital, saying no one died of neglect or lack of food and water. He said some were patients who were on ventilators and others, critically ill, succumbed to their illnesses in oppressive heat that soared to 110 degrees inside after the backup generators ran out of fuel.

‘To my knowledge — and I’ll go to my grave with this — there was no one there who could have been salvaged’ and wasn’t, Kokemor said in a phone interview from Gulf Shores, Ala., where he is staying. ‘Sure, some did die, but they were ‘do not resuscitate’ or in their death throes anyway.'” (picture via The Boston Globe)

Update:
The Telegraph in the UK has a somewhat different take: “Doctor fled and left 45 patients to die.“