No Way Out

(CBS)  Produced by Paul Ryan and Sara Rodriguez

[This broadcast originally aired on Feb. 2, 2008.]

After Hurricane Katrina had passed over southeastern Louisiana in August 2005, many people thought the region had been spared from the most severe damage.

But the worst was yet to come: the region's protective levees started to fail, and entire communities were overwhelmed by floodwaters.

Thousands had evacuated the region, but others stayed behind to ride out the storm, including the residents and staff of St. Rita's Nursing Home in St. Bernard Parish.

The wall of water and its aftermath left 35 of the residents dead, and prompted negligent homicide and other charges against the owners of the nursing home.

They faced the possibility of spending the rest of their life in prison.

Would and should the owners be held responsible for their decision not to evacuate?

Correspondent Harold Dow reports.

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Just southeast of New Orleans, in St. Bernard Parish, St. Rita's Nursing Home sits empty and silent. It's where Joe Galladoro and his sister Cheryl last saw their father, T.J., alive.

"To hear that my dad was left in a building, and drowned, that's just unforgivable," Cheryl says.

The people Cheryl can't forgive are the nursing home's owners, Sal and Mabel Mangano. "I was told that he would be cared for the way he needed to be cared for. And taken out of harm's way," she says.

"They lied to us and therefore my father perished," Joe adds.

The last weekend of T.J. Galladoro's life was in late August 2005. All over the Gulf Coast, preparations were being made for Katrina, the hurricane many predicted would be "the big one."

Larry Ingargiola was the director of Homeland Security for St. Bernard Parish. "I believed that we were gonna see 20, 22 feet of water," he recalls.

Parish clerk Polly Boudreaux says St. Bernard officials were desperately telling residents to leave. "There were messages over and over, not just parish government messages on our cable station, but the news media was out saying the same thing," she says.

"The reality sunk in for a vast majority of our residents Friday and Saturday. That made them pack up and go," she adds.

That Saturday night, Cheryl was checking in on her father one last time at St. Rita's, before she took her family north. "My dad looked up and calls me 'Shay.' That was a little pet name he had for me. And said, 'Shay, you coming to get me tomorrow? They have a hurricane coming,'" she remembers. "I looked at him and I said, 'Well, dad, you know. You're going to be taken care of.' He listened. He heard. He knew it. But waits a little while and again, the same question came. 'Shay, you coming to get me tomorrow?'"

Cheryl knew it was too risky to move her frail father herself, so she was relying on St. Rita's to take him out of harm's way.

"One of the nurses came in. Sat on a chair. Knee to knee with me. Held my hands. And she said, 'Cheryl, you need to go. And no, don't worry about your dad. The home has an evacuation in plan. He'll be fine. You need to leave your dad with us, because you're not able to tend to his needs.' I was crying and she kept assuring me, 'This is where your dad needs to be, he will be taken care of,'" Cheryl says.

Also relying on St. Rita's to take care of his mother, Eva, was Tom Rodrigue, an emergency management official in neighboring Jefferson Parish. But Rodrigue was having trouble getting in touch with the Manganos.

"I called at least twice on Saturday. I asked if they were available, and they told me they were not available to come and talk on the phone. So and when I hung up, I called the emergency manager for St. Bernard who I knew. I spoke with him, and he told me, 'Hey, tomorrow they're gonna call for a mandatory evacuation. They'll have to respond,'" Rodrigue remembers.

By Sunday morning, Aug. 28, Katrina was churning through the Gulf and upgraded to a category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous kind. At 8 a.m., parish officials broadcast their starkest warning yet to those who might still be in the parish. "You need to leave. You must leave St. Bernard Parish and head north," they warned.

But just after that message was broadcast, parish officials learned that St. Rita's nursing home had still not evacuated. "It was shocking," says Polly Boudreaux. "I think we were all mortified that, you know, at that stage that they would still be there."

"Did you want St. Rita's to evacuate your mom and all the other residents?" Dow asks Rodrigue.

"Absolutely," he says. "I really never had any options. I had to depend on them."

Boudreaux was ordered to call Mabel Mangano to see if St. Rita's needed buses to evacuate. "Her comment was that they were concerned about the condition of the very frail patients, that if they put them on the buses, those who were the most frail would not survive the trip on the bus," Boudreaux says.

Later that morning, parish coroner Dr. Bryan Bertucci called St. Rita's again. "I spoke to Mabel, and told her that I had two buses that could take the residents wherever she wanted. The response that I got was that, 'We have five special needy patients, five nurses, two generators. And I've spoken to most of the families, and they said we could stay.' My response was, 'Do you want the buses, or do you not want the buses?' The answer was no," he says.

But by Sunday night, as the storm closed in, Cheryl Galladoro was hundreds of miles away, still thinking she had left her frail and sickly 82-year-old father in good hands. "When I kissed my dad goodbye, I didn't know that that would be for the last time I would ever kiss him goodbye. He had a look on his face like, you know, 'You're leaving me,'" she remembers.

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[angelicar-2009]

Although this was a predicted event as seen in many scientific journal, engineering studies and by the Corps of Engineerinf themselves. Lets not forget the school bus full of elderly people who burned to death cause of a spark catching on to someones O2 tank and the whole bus with all the elderly on it were killed in an inferno.

[angelicar-2009]

True Statement Quote:
When visiting New Orleans in May of 2005 we were told that if a storm took a direct hit on New Orleans the levees would break because Nutra Rats had burrowed into the levees weakening them to a state of disrepair and the Government knew of the problem at that time.So if you want to point fingers and lay blame the Army Corps of Eng. may be a beginning. Katrina was the straw that broke the weakened levees.

Repsonse:
This is well documented on the discovery channel! and scientific magazines. You want to blame someone blame Congress the Levee problem has been known about for years and years; they failed to appropriate the money to fix the levees. The Corps was moved from the Levee mission a couple of years before Katrina in a series of downsizing the government (cause taxes are bad.) So while the rest of the country might be able to put shoe on their children''s feet; New Orleans became a death trap for many because Congress failed to put money into our infrastructure. It is well documented that Corp wanted to fix the levees but Congress and other leadship bodies failed the people of this country and everyone is pointing fingers in the wrong directions; this one really belongs to the executive bodies of leadership.

[chrisbrod]

What if the Maganos evacuated everyone and after moving them back the levee breeched would that be their fault? They survived Katrina not the breech.The water hit like a tsunami that caused the deaths. Hindsight is 20/20 but even in this case no one could have foreseen the levee breech. How can you blame someone for that?

[baconskt]

This was a tragic NATURAL DISASTER. I don''t believe for a second that the Manganos anticipated the magnitude of this disaster, and they should NOT have been charged with homicide. My heart breaks for all involved, but it adds to the tragedy to blame the Manganos. I cannot imagine why a mandatory evacuation was not issued (though it sounded like it was because of a loss of revenue for the town... and why aren''t the victims'' families outraged by that?), and I am dumbfounded as to why our government didn''t do more to help. Is it because our government officials, who are elected to make wise decisions on our behalf, did not anticipate the magnitude of this natural disaster? Yet the Manganos are expected to? The wrong people were on trial.

[kidsnursega]

Let%u2019s look at the truth in the situation. First of all to onesuegibson who said that people on %u201Clife support%u201D are only in ICUs: You are WRONG! There are people that require advanced medical technology to live including ventilators, that attend school, work and live at home. The only people indicted in the hospital and nursing home deaths were the Manganos. There were more than 200 Katrina-related deaths at four New Orleans-area hospitals and 13 nursing homes. Yes, that is correct 13 nursing homes including Lafon with 22 deaths, so clearly other nursing homes felt the same way the Manganos did. Testimony during the trial showed that the majority of the nursing homes in the path of the storm (36 of 57) did not evacuate. Finally: To all the families who lost loved ones at St. Rita%u2019s: You have reported that you were told that they would be leaving, but according to your own comments you did not know where your family members were. Did you ask the following questions? 1. Where are you evacuating to? 2. How can I contact you to find out where my family member has been taken? 3. Here is my cell phone number: Please have the new facility call when my loved one arrives. 4. When should I expect to hear that my loved one has safely arrived at the new location? Simple, responsible, loving questions. Let%u2019s look at who should really be blamed for the disaster that was Katrina and not blame everything on a single couple.

[onesuegibson]

Harold Dow missed a glaringly important point in this story. He allowed the Mandanos and their attorney to repeatedly refer to potentially having to "pull the plug" on some residents without exploring what that means. People on life support do not live in nursing homes; they are exclusively in Intensive Care Units in hospitals. I can''t anything a nursing home resident would depend on that uses electricity. Oxygen could be provided by portable tanks.

[pollroller1]

I would like to add that their are two businesses that I would never want to be in. One is the nursing home business and the other is child care.

[pollroller1]

This was a terrible, terrible tragedy and I feel bad for the families that lost their loved ones. But in life we have to make choices. It''s always easy to look back after the fact and say they should have done this or they should have done that. What if they had tried to move all of those people and they died while being moved? Their is no right or wrong answer for a lot of decisions that we all make every day. I guess that is why we have lawyers.

[q-tessa]

Just curious...does anyone know when an "evacuation plan" is REQUIRED to go into effect? In the show they said it is required to be filed each year, but didn''t specify when it is REQUIRED by law to be used? Or is there no law on that? There should be! Even though I don''t feel the Mangano''s bear the sole responsibility, they do bear the responsiblity of a good/accurate/safe evacuation plan that should be enacted and should work. Also, if the other nursing homes did evacuate, wouldn''t the Manganos have known this? Wouldn''t they feel they should go too? Don''t these Nusing homes communicate/share info? If one is to go wouldn''t they call the other and say ..do u need help...u should go, etc, etc, etc?

[q-tessa]

This story is so tragic & sad. My heart goes out to the families & the people who died. Everyone devastated by Hurricane Katrina is a victim. We should be empathic to all who suffered in this horrific storm/levee break. Many things were not in place to save/help the people of these communities. I can''t believe this can happen in America. It''s amazing that in such a rich/blessed country as ours, with the generosity of millions of Americans, that things aren''t back to normal for our fellow Americans. I guess that is another issue.
That being said, the Mangano''s should not bear the only blame. They suffer their own hell thinking about those they lost. Unless what they did was illegal, then they cannot be soley to blame.