Failure to evacuate St. Rita’s Nursing Home

The failure to evacuate St. Rita’s Nursing Home before Hurricane Katrina exposed how a mandatory evacuation order could leave vulnerable residents in danger when transportation, preparation, and enforcement fell short. More than thirty residents apparently drowned at the single-story facility in St. Bernard Parish. The deaths became part of a broader reckoning over why patients in hospitals and nursing homes accounted for a significant share of the disaster’s toll—and over whether the tragedy resulted from unavoidable hazards, institutional choices, or both.

The Evacuation Order and Its Limits

On the morning the storm approached, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered an immediate mandatory evacuation. The order came after delays over logistical and legal questions. Many residents had no car or other way to leave, and officials knew that transport plans had serious gaps, including too few drivers. People who could drive were already caught in heavy traffic leaving the city. The New Orleans Superdome was designated a shelter of last resort, with shuttle buses intended for people unable to evacuate on their own; the mayor specifically urged people with medical conditions to go there.

The wider evacuation effort was under severe strain. Dispatchers at Acadian Ambulance were overwhelmed with requests to move patients from hospitals, nursing homes, and homes. Many of the company’s ambulances were stuck on the interstate, and some began taking patients to the Superdome rather than attempting to get them out of the region. Against that backdrop, nursing homes faced a short interval to arrange safe transport, but the order to evacuate them was not enforced. Many were unprepared and did not receive the support needed to move residents in the time available; about two-thirds of affected nursing homes kept residents in place.

Deaths at St. Rita’s and the Owners’ Account

St. Rita’s was a single-story nursing home near failed levees in St. Bernard Parish. More than thirty residents apparently drowned there. In the first reports, the married owners, Sal and Mabel Mangano, were said to be nowhere to be found. Later, the account became more complicated: contrary to what many people had assumed, the Manganos had stayed at the home and tried to save residents.

That account did not resolve the central question of whether the home should have been evacuated before the storm. The owners had been urged to evacuate, and the Louisiana attorney general’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit investigated facilities where patients had died. In St. Rita’s case, Attorney General Charles Foti issued arrest warrants charging each of the Manganos with thirty-four counts of negligent homicide for failing to evacuate residents before Katrina. The couple surrendered to authorities.

The Dispute over Evacuation Risk

The prosecution prompted a public dispute about whether staying or leaving posed the greater danger. The Manganos’ attorney, James A. Cobb Jr., defended their decision and called his clients heroes, while criticizing Foti for acting before he knew the whole story. He argued that evacuation could itself expose residents to serious risks, a point made more forcefully after Hurricane Rita struck western Louisiana and Texas on September 24.

During the Rita evacuation, a charter bus carrying elderly residents from Brighton Gardens of Bellaire to a sister facility in Dallas caught fire; twenty-three of the thirty-eight people aboard died. The storm ultimately spared Houston. The tragedy made the risks of moving medically vulnerable people newly visible, but it did not establish what would have happened had St. Rita’s residents been evacuated. It sharpened the dilemma rather than settling it: leaving residents in place could expose them to flood and power failure, while moving them through congested roads in inadequate vehicles could also be fatal.

The risks of evacuation were not hypothetical in the wider region. Three residents of Ferncrest Manor Living Center reportedly died from heat-related complications while being transported to Baton Rouge before Katrina, after spending hours boarding and traveling on buses without functioning air-conditioning, drinking water, and, in some cases, nurses. At Chateau Living Center, thirteen residents died in the heat after power failed; that facility had been the home for which a contracted tour company had refused to provide buses before the storm. These cases show how evacuation failures and hazardous evacuations could coexist, with neither the order nor the promise of transport ensuring a safe route for residents.

Investigation and the Wider Disaster

The deaths at St. Rita’s emerged alongside other losses in hospitals and nursing homes across the flooded region. Their scale raised urgent questions about emergency plans, pre-storm investment, oversight, and whether some operators had avoided evacuation costs. At the same time, the wider failure involved delayed orders, insufficient buses and drivers, uncoordinated rescue efforts, and weak backup systems. The book presents the St. Rita’s case within that network of failures without treating the surrounding conditions as an answer to the specific questions about the home’s decisions.

Foti publicly condemned the Manganos, and the arrest warrants turned the dispute into a criminal investigation. Cobb countered that the owners had stayed to try to protect residents and that the danger of evacuation deserved consideration. The evidence presented here does not give the case’s final legal outcome. Its lasting significance in the account lies in the unresolved tension between a duty to move residents away from a known threat and the practical dangers of attempting that move without reliable transport, preparation, or support.