September 2, 2005

September 2, 2005, stands in the account of Hurricane Katrina as a day when evacuation reached a critical milestone without ending the crisis. By that date, Memorial Medical Center had evacuated every living patient, often in private helicopters hired by Tenet after government rescue efforts were overwhelmed. The same Friday, workers from a nearby hospital found a patient alive and abandoned at Touro Infirmary. Together, the two episodes make the date a measure not only of who had been moved, but of how unevenly rescue reached people in New Orleans.

Evacuation Under Constraint

The evacuations unfolded against severe limits on movement. Ray Nagin urged residents to leave, but many had no cars or other way out, and the city’s transport plans lacked enough drivers. People who could travel independently were already caught in interstate traffic. The New Orleans Superdome was designated as a shelter of last resort, and shuttle buses were intended to bring people there; Ray Nagin specifically appealed to residents with medical conditions, including those on dialysis, to move there quickly.

Ambulance dispatchers at Acadian Ambulance were overwhelmed by requests to move patients from hospitals, nursing homes, and homes. Many of the roughly two dozen ambulances made available were immobilized in traffic. To save time, some began taking patients to the New Orleans Superdome rather than attempting to carry them out of the city. The decisions show how the intended distinction between evacuation from danger and relocation within the city narrowed under pressure.

Memorial’s Evacuation Milestone

At Memorial Medical Center, the evacuation came after more than four days of poor sanitation, loss of power, air-conditioning and running water, and indoor temperatures approaching 110 degrees. Some patients died despite the efforts of physicians and nurses. By September 2, however, every patient still living had been evacuated; private helicopters hired by Tenet helped complete the work when government rescue capacity was overwhelmed. The date therefore marks an endpoint to the hospital evacuation, not a claim that all patients had survived or that the surrounding emergency had passed.

The wider account also records the strain placed on patients and caregivers during the crisis, without assigning every episode to September 2. An outpatient made her way through floodwater to Memorial for a scheduled chemotherapy appointment, only to be told that treatment could not be given. The water around the sloping hospital grounds had stabilized at roughly five to six feet, rather than reaching the additional fifteen feet staff feared. On LifeCare’s ward, Angela cared for her mother, Wilda, when ordinary support was scarce: she managed feeding and personal care, sought a nurse to help clean and redress her mother, and talked, sang, and prayed with her. These scenes place the evacuation milestone within a longer period of improvised care and uncertainty.

A Second Measure of Rescue

On Friday, September 2, a patient at Touro Infirmary was found alive and abandoned by workers from a nearby hospital. The account identifies the discovery but does not provide further details about the patient or the circumstances of the abandonment. Its juxtaposition with Memorial’s completed evacuation is significant: the same date could record a hospital’s removal of all living patients and, elsewhere, the discovery of someone still left behind.

The Date in the Disaster’s Wider Toll

The book situates these events within a disaster whose consequences were not reducible to one hospital or one day. More than a thousand people died immediately in New Orleans, many in medical facilities and many others among the poor and elderly; additional people suffered and died later amid stress and disrupted health care. The account attributes the toll to interacting failures, including a delayed evacuation order, inadequate transport, uncoordinated rescue efforts, poor communication between agencies, fragile hospital backup power and water systems, and interruptions to rescue prompted by fears of lawlessness. September 2 thus functions as a concrete temporal hinge: a major evacuation had been completed at Memorial, even as the Touro discovery and the broader toll exposed how incomplete and unequal the city’s rescue remained.