Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans became one of the most harrowing sites of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. Over five days in late August and early September 2005, the hospital lost power, flooded, and became cut off from the outside world. Forty-five patients died there, and the events that unfolded inside led to a criminal investigation, a grand jury proceeding, and a national reckoning over medical ethics in disasters.
Five Days Without Power or Rescue
When Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, Memorial Medical Center initially weathered the storm itself. The crisis began that afternoon, when several levees broke and floodwaters surged through the surrounding streets. Water rose steadily around the hospital, eventually reaching the lower levels of the building where the backup generators were located. Once those generators were submerged and knocked out, the hospital lost electricity entirely.
Without power, the building became dangerously hot in the Gulf Coast summer. Air conditioning stopped. Ventilators shut down. Elevators no longer worked, which meant staff had to carry patients up and down stairwells by hand. The hospital had no reliable way to communicate with the outside world, and for days, no organized evacuation arrived. Staff, patients, and their families were essentially trapped.
The last patients and staff were not evacuated until September 1, a full three days after the flooding began. During that time, medical professionals inside the hospital worked with dwindling supplies, no refrigeration for medications, and almost no sleep.
A Makeshift Triage System
As it became clear that evacuation would be slow and chaotic, staff carried roughly 100 patients down to the first floor and assigned each one a number: 1, 2, or 3. Patients labeled 1 were the healthiest and most mobile. They were taken to the emergency room, where rescue boats had arrived after sunrise made water navigation possible. Patients labeled 2 were lined up along a corridor leading to a makeshift opening that connected to a helicopter landing area. Patients labeled 3, the sickest and most fragile, were designated to leave last.
This system inverted the usual emergency triage logic, where the most critically ill receive attention first. The reasoning was grimly practical: in a situation with limited rescue capacity and no functioning medical equipment, the patients most likely to survive the evacuation itself were prioritized.
The Seventh Floor and LifeCare Patients
Memorial’s seventh floor was leased to LifeCare Hospitals, a separate long-term care facility that treated severely ill patients who needed extended hospitalization. Many of LifeCare’s patients were especially vulnerable to the loss of electricity. Seven were on ventilators that stopped working when the generators flooded. These patients were among the sickest in the building and largely could not be moved easily through stairwells or loaded onto boats and helicopters.
The LifeCare patients were not initially included in the triage count of roughly 100 patients brought to the first floor. Their fate became the center of the investigation that followed.
45 Deaths and an Investigation
After the hospital was fully evacuated, 45 bodies were recovered from Memorial Medical Center. Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti ordered autopsies on all 45, including sophisticated toxicology testing. The investigation was triggered after a physician at Memorial told news outlets that he had heard discussions inside the hospital about euthanizing the most frail patients during the crisis.
The investigation focused on Dr. Anna Pou, a head and neck surgeon who had stayed at the hospital through the entire ordeal. Investigators alleged that she had administered lethal doses of morphine to critically ill patients who were unlikely to survive or be rescued. Two nurses were also investigated.
The case became one of the most polarizing medical ethics stories in modern American history. Supporters saw Dr. Pou as a dedicated physician who stayed behind when she could have left, doing what she believed would ease suffering in an impossible situation. Critics argued that no physician has the authority to end a patient’s life, regardless of the circumstances, and that the patients and their families were not consulted.
The Grand Jury Decision
One year after Hurricane Katrina, an Orleans Parish grand jury refused to indict Dr. Anna Pou. She was exonerated of all homicide charges. The grand jury determined that her actions were not rooted in gross negligence or criminal intent. The two nurses were also not indicted.
The outcome did not settle the ethical debate. It did, however, influence how lawmakers and hospital administrators thought about disaster preparedness. In the years that followed, states including Louisiana expanded legal protections for medical professionals acting during declared emergencies. Louisiana’s governor had already suspended state medical licensing requirements for out-of-state professionals during the Katrina response, and the broader framework of emergency liability protections became a more prominent part of disaster planning nationwide.
What Happened to the Hospital
Memorial Medical Center never reopened under its original name. The facility, which had operated for decades as a community hospital in uptown New Orleans, was eventually acquired by Ochsner Health System. It now operates as Ochsner Baptist, a campus of Ochsner Medical Center. The 182-bed hospital is fully accredited and staffed by more than 300 physicians, serving the same neighborhood that Memorial once did.
The physical building survived, but the institution that existed before August 2005 did not. The story of what happened inside Memorial during those five days was later documented in detail by journalist Sheri Fink, whose reporting won a Pulitzer Prize and became the book “Five Days at Memorial.” The book and subsequent adaptation brought renewed attention to questions that remain unresolved: how hospitals should prepare for total infrastructure failure, who decides which patients are saved first when resources run out, and what legal and ethical framework should govern life-and-death decisions when normal systems of oversight have completely collapsed.