Post the initial storm of Hurricane Katrina the power went out at Memorial Medical Hospital. Doctors faced the near impossible question of - do we leave these people here in the heat and humidity, or do we help them pass on? Learn the story of Dr. Anna Pou and what she decided to do.
Post the initial storm of Hurricane Katrina the power went out at Memorial Medical Hospital. Doctors faced the near impossible question of - do we leave these people here in the heat and humidity, or do we help them pass on? Learn the story of Dr. Anna Pou and what she decided to do.
Taylor: Watching World Cup finals, it totally recombobulated my perception
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of State of California vs. Orenthal James Simpson, case number BA096.
>> Farz: And so, my fellow Americans, ask not. Boom. Taylor. We are live. And this is my radio voice. You know what's happening? We are recording.
>> Taylor: You know what I was thinking? I was thinking that we should have a channel where we do the commentary on the next World cup games, where we're like, I don't know what's going on. Why is there five more minutes all of a sudden? What does this even mean? Where's the ball? I don't know.
>> Farz: Do you know? You know what's funny is watching today, watching the finals, the final match, Argentina in Spain, there was one goal that should have been a goal that wasn't. And it totally recombobulated my perception of what offsides means.
>> Taylor: Were they showing perception?
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah. I had a whole perception of, like, what it was. And I was like, yeah, it was totally wrong.
>> Taylor: Everyone is tired. I'm glad. We need a break. No, it was fun. The bar we were at, the. The TV went black at like 15 seconds in the room that we were in, and everybody was like, screaming and we all ran to the other room. It was really fun.
>> Farz: It was very. I. It's. It's such a gift to the world that we have the World Cup. Like, I don't like the NFL at NBA. No sport is like that. Like, it's. Yeah, it was really, really.
>> Taylor: It was a blast. I was sitting next to, like, a younger, young woman who came in. She was 23. She was telling me, but she came in just to see Justin Bieber, and she was like sobbing hysterically when he was singing. It was great. And I was like. I, like, put my hand on her back. She was like, not. Okay. So I was like, holding hands with strangers and like, I love that. I love that stuff. So fun.
>> Farz: Okay, can I. Can I point out, I thought the Justin. The song Justin Bieber chose, it was weird. Can we. Can we do high energy, bro? 100 mid the middle of the game of like a World cannot anymore.
>> Taylor: Yeah, you're following what you're following. Dynamite by bts, which is the best. And it also, like, what is he wearing? Like, did he. Did he cut up his own sweatshirt for $10 million?
>> Farz: Taylor, I was watching the. The BTS thing and I was like, man, I. I know Taylor knows all of this. It's like some K pop band.
>> Taylor: Like, that's what was happening. I was like. I was like, that's Jimin. That's. That one is Jin. That one is V. And Juan was like, thanks. Just so you know, there's Suga. He's right there.
>> Farz: I know. You would know.
>> Taylor: I know who they are. I know all their names. I just printed. Oh, my God. I don't have them here, but my sister's going to see BTS for a second time this year because they're doing their North American tour, and she seen them in Baltimore in August. In August. And I figured out I found, like, these, like, free prints, and I printed her, like, a hundred BTS keychains just, like, hand out to people and, like, play with them. It's so fun.
>> Farz: You know what's weird is I'm gonna. I'm gonna talk about, like, a disaster situation, which I'm so not in the mood to talk about because I feel like the world came together and we all bonded and put our differences aside, and now I'm gonna talk about a horrible event. I can't. It feels weird, right?
>> Taylor: I mean, it's like.
>> Farz: It's like you're not tapping into the zeitgeist. You're doing the opposite. You're, like, pivoting the zeitgeist to you.
>> Taylor: Why don't we bring it down a little bit?
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, Bring us down. Bring us down.
Taylor: I saw the Odyssey, and you're gonna see it next week
>> Taylor: Let me introduce us, and then you can bring us down. Welcome to Doomed to Fail for your historical disasters. And I am Taylor, joined by Fars. Before we start, I do want to tell you that, well, I saw the Odyssey, and you're gonna see it next week. It's amazing. I don't have to. I'm not. That's not a spoiler. Like, it's just incredible. It's so good. But before the Odyssey, there was a preview for another movie with Andrew Garfield called. Oh, my God, now I forgot I put it on our Instagram because it's about the peasants revolt that you and I talked about on episode 172 of Doomed to Fail. The 1381 peasants revolt. And I can't remember what it's called. It is called something, but it's a new. Okay. The Uprising. Uprising is a new Anna Garfield movie about the 1381 peasants revolt, which you can learn about on episode 172 of dude to Fail.
>> Farz: So be ready for episode 172 to get re. Released, like, once a week, every week.
>> Taylor: I'm happy to do it. Yeah.
>> Farz: My only issue. Okay, so I. I wasn't originally going to go see the Odyssey because I just don't go to non horror movies at all. Rachel really want to see. So I'm like, I'm in. And also as Christopher Nolan. And like, like I said to you, like, he cannot not make a banger movie. My only qualms with the. With the Odyssey is like, why are Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, like, part of it? Like, this is a Greek, Middle Eastern episode.
>> Taylor: No one is. No one is Greek or Middle Eastern at all. Yeah, no, there's very. Maybe, like, one.
>> Farz: Like. Like, that's what I'm getting. It's like I said. Okay, so they're like professional actors and they're bankable, so you have to put them in. But it's like, I don't know, Like,
>> Taylor: I mean, also, it's also like, you know, not a true story. It's like a myth. And so it's like. It's like, it can be. You know, you can reinterpret a myth however you want to. But also, yes, there's no. There's a bunch of white people.
>> Farz: All right, well, my point being here, Taylor, that I should have been cast in the Odyssey.
>> Taylor: You should have been. I'm sorry that they didn't.
>> Farz: I could be Achilles. I could be Achilles. I'd be
>> Taylor: Achilles. Wasn't in it, unfortunately, because Achilles, the Odyssey is coming back from Troy. Achilles is in Troy. He's like, part of that Trojan War. But the Odyssey is Odysseus coming back home.
>> Farz: I'm really showing off my lack of education on this topic, and you are verifying it.
>> Taylor: Well, I mean, I also just obviously, like, I'm a reader, as you know, but the. The. The Madeline Miller interpretations of Circe and the Song of Achilles are just fantastic. And if anyone knows, if you know, you know, they are great. I cried a lot during both of them. In, like, good ways. They're excellent. But that's how I know a lot of those things. So.
>> Farz: So I'll say this. Austin has three IMAX theaters.
>> Taylor: Oh, we did see.
>> Farz: Huh?
>> Taylor: We did see it in imax.
>> Farz: So I looked up for the entire week, the IMAX showings, and the only one that had tickets was, like, the 10pm showings. Like, they're booked for the whole week. So I definitely don't think I'm going to watch on imax, but I don't think.
>> Taylor: I don't like Super Matter, but I know it was great. You'll love it.
>> Farz: Sweet.
Well, let's get into our topic. It starts a woman and we're split on whether it's a hero or a villain woman
Well, let's get into our topic. I know you have to run soon. Ish. And probably I do, too. But we'll dive into our topic and you're gonna like it. Because it stars. Well, I don't know if you're gonna like it. It starts a woman, and we're split on whether it's a hero or a villain woman. I'm on the hero side of the ledger, and we're gonna find out where you are.
>> Taylor: Cool.
This is about what happens when every system fails, from city to state
>> Farz: So we're gonna cover a hospital, and it's a hospital that endured a lot more than others hospitals possibly would. And so we're going to go into the details, but long story short is, like, when we cover disasters, a lot of times the question is, like, who messed up? What was the. What measurement did they miss? Or what bolts did they miss? That's not what's going on here. This is more systematic than that. This is about what happens when every system fails, from city to state to federal. And there's one doctor, in this case, a woman named Anna P O U PO Okay, Anna Poe, who holds it all together.
>> Taylor: And you think she's a hero. Before you tell me the story, you're a hero.
>> Farz: Yeah, I do. I do.
>> Taylor: Tell me more. I don't. I don't. I don't know anything. But I'm keeping that in mind as you start.
This whole topic came to me from researching Jack Kevorkian
>> Farz: Well, I'll give you this precursor. We're in New Orleans in 2005.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: Anything?
>> Taylor: Yeah, a bad thing happened. Katrina happened then. Right?
>> Farz: Sure. Yes, that. You know what's funny, Taylor, is this whole topic came to me from researching Jack Kevorkian. I was going to do a whole episode on Jack Kevorkian, and. And it, like, led me down this, like, winding path because his story is actually not that interesting. Like, I mean, his story is really interesting. Like, what he did is really interesting, but it's also very, like, procedural and legislative. And it has, like. Like, if I were to tell his story, it would be like. And then because of him, we have HB270 12. But, like, you know.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: Yeah. It wouldn't be, like, something you'd want to listen on a car or what, whatever. So I'm going to cover this because it led me down this path.
This story is about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on a New Orleans hospital
So, yes, Katrina. We are in New Orleans circa 2005. So here's the story. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on month. Sorry, real quick. This is not about Hurricane Katrina. It's about the effects of Hurricane Katrina on this one specific hospital. That's very interesting. So we're in New Orleans on Monday, August 29th. That's kind of the starting point of the story. Although we're going to start towards the end on September 11, 2005, which is 13 days after Katrina actually hit the hospital. So we have recovery workers who enter Memorial Medical center in New Orleans on that day, and they carry out about 45 bodies. That was the most number of bodies any hospital or nursing home had to deliver on that day.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Disposed of on that day. About 2215 patients actually died, like, during the storm in New Orleans. But what was interesting about this was that 41 of the bodies that were covered, toxicology reports would show that 23 came back positive for morphine or a thing called midazolam, which is like another lethal drug.
>> Taylor: Okay. Because I was gonna ask, like, what are people dying of? And that's, I guess, what you're gonna tell me. Yeah.
>> Farz: There's a doctor, a woman named Anna Poe, PO P O U. I kept saying, pugh, it's Poe. She was arrested and charged with second degree murder. And then a grand jury made up of people who lived in New Orleans at that time. They were like, we're cool. We don't want to indict her. So technically, I think. I think this is what's called jury nullification, which is like, you broke the law. We all know you broke the law, but we're cool with it, so we're going to move past it. That's actually what it reminds me of, that one case where the. This one guy's like, kid, like, his son was abducted by his karate teacher. And then he was record on camera shooting the karate teacher in the face
>> Taylor: in, like, the courtroom?
>> Farz: No, no, it was in the airport. The guy was coming back to Texas from Louisiana or some. He shot in the face. And the jury was like, yes, that is the man. That is the bullet. That is his head. We're okay with this. And they were like, we're good. You go now. So, yeah, I think this is one of those cases. In the end, the state of Louisiana ended up paying all her legal fees, around $450,000. And state lawmakers formally apologized for even trying to prosecute her. For what the events that were going to happen.
Memorial Medical Center opened in 1926 at Southern Baptist Hospital
So we're going to start the story with Memorial Medical center in Uptown New Orleans. It opened in 1926 at Southern Baptist Hospital. So I'm probably going to like, interchangeably refer to it as Memorial and Baptist. Just as a heads up, just so you're aware, this was a very, very, like, old school hospital. So it's been around since 1926. A ton of the people in that neighborhood were born there or their families worked there. Like, the picture I'm trying to paint is like, it was Very human and community. Like it was, it was a community center kind of at that point. One detail about it is that at some point many, many years before hurricane Katrina hit is a helipad was bolted to the top of the parking garage and then like a, like nobody used it. So by the time Katrina hit, nobody knew if this thing was rusted all the way through or if it was functional or whatever.
>> Taylor: Stupid question. Like, what do you need special to be a helipad? Can't you just be like a ground?
>> Farz: Well, if it's, if it's positioned on it, that means that it's probably raised and the raised infrastructure is bolted to the garage itself. And so if you haven't done anything to it, it might fall apart is the theory. Okay. But that's. Long story short is like, that's a piece of the puzzle of like, we don't, like, the people who are dealing with everything that's going to come next don't totally know what's happening. So this hospital, I'm going to call it interspersely baptist first memorial. It was also kind of like a. Like a default hurricane shelter for the community. Like, I don't know how to articulate, like it was a place for the whole city to come together. Like it had a, it had an effect on the people. And it had gone through a historic 80 year run of hurricanes where nothing bad had happened at the hospital. And so people in the neighborhood were like, hey, if we don't feel safe, we're gonna go to the hospital.
>> Taylor: Yeah, yeah, I feel that way. Like whenever I'm in the south. I don't know if it's. Is it in the Austin airport too? They're like, the bathrooms are like storm shelters.
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You never know.
>> Taylor: Yeah. And then like here, I mean, in here where it's hot, like there are places that you can go in the community that are cool, you know, so probably something like that.
>> Farz: Yeah, exactly. You know, I looked, I looked up the number of hurricanes this place had dealt with, and I actually learned a lot about hurricane Katrina in the process because I didn't actually understand that it wasn't a strong hurricane. Like, it actually was not. It was just that the levees broke. It was the fact that it sustained over time that caused the levees to break in the levies. So I, I'll, I'll talk about that.
>> Taylor: Tell me more. Tell me more.
>> Farz: Hurricane Betsy in 1965 hit the hospital and that was at the time the most expensive natural disaster in u. S. History, costing A billion dollars of damages. It was called Billion Dollar Betsy apparently by the time I entered it. But it was fine. Nothing happened. Then you have Camille in 1969, which was a Cat 5 hurricane, and that also hit and nothing happened to the hospital. You have Georgia 98. You have Ivan in 2004, which I do remember, and nothing happened. No issues. The only thing worth noting is what we just said, which is none of those hurricanes, despite how big they were, caused the levies to break. So these, like three of the last four I read out hit that hospital, and they were bigger than hurricane Katrina. But Hurricane Katrina was what caused the levies to break.
>> Taylor: So that was just like a compounding stress on the levies or whatever.
>> Farz: Exactly, exactly. Also, I. I don't understand any of the science around this at all or the geography, but where Memorial slash Baptist was, was an uptown New Orleans, which is roughly higher.
>> Taylor: Also.
>> Farz: Yes, it was. When the flooding was at its peak, the wards that you would see, like the Ninth Ward, were 20ft flooded. Meanwhile, Baptist slash Memorial were about 10ft flooded. Okay, so that's context.
>> Taylor: Got it.
>> Farz: In 2005, Memorial was owned by a company called Tenet Healthcare, which, like, I thought was like a really. It's a kind of a freaky name to name. It remind me of a Christopher Nolan movie.
>> Taylor: I literally every time. I've never saw it. I never saw a Tenant, but I just can't believe that Tenant is not a biography about David Tennant. That's what I just think it is. Even though I know. I don't know. I know it isn't.
>> Farz: Wait, who's David Tennant?
>> Taylor: The actor from, like Doctor who. And he's in a bunch of stuff. He's famous actor, but I just. I don't. I don't have no idea what Tennant's about, but I just assume it's the biography of David Tennant, which I know it isn't. So I. So that's a lot. Think about it.
>> Farz: It was very good. It was a very good movie. I don't think it was his best. I still think the Dark Knight movies are his best movies ever.
>> Taylor: But I can't wait to hear. Hear what you think about that. I think it's okay.
>> Farz: We're gonna see.
Tenant owns a hospital that was flooded during Katrina
So anyways, Tenant owns this hospital during Katrina. When Katrina hit, about 2,000 people were inside of it. And the breakdowns explains. Explains a lot because you have 250 patients, you have 500 to 600 staff, and the thousands of others are pulled from the neighborhood. Like this is safe. I'M going to go here.
>> Taylor: I'm coming here to, like, hunker down.
>> Farz: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Most of our story happens after Hurricane Katrina passed
>> Taylor: We have another question. I don't know if you know this does. Did Hurricane Katrina happen? Like, how long. How long was it? Like, how long would you have had to hunker down?
>> Farz: It was. It was. So it hit August 29th. Most of our story happens after, like, Katrina passed. So I think it was like a day or so that. That, like, you actually dealt with it. That was actually a piece of this I deleted, which was like, part of it was people thought, okay, the hurricane passed, we're good, everything's fine. Like, the sun is out, light is out, and we're good.
>> Taylor: Was it just the eye? But. But, oh, it was. It was over. But it was not the levies.
>> Farz: It was the levies that collapse because of the weight of the water that was being pushed into them after the storm passed. So the fact that the storm passed had nothing to do with how dangerous this was. It was more dangerous after the fact. The original building that Memorial was in was built in 1926, like I mentioned, and all of the heavy machinery, like the electrical stuff was placed in the basement because that was the way you architected things over time, obviously. I'm going to go into more detail here later. You could have changed that. But we'll sort that out here in a little bit. After Ivan in 2004, one year before Katrina hit, Memorial's own facilities, people, they put into writing, quote, it won't take much water in height to disable the majority of the medical center, end quote. So they knew they had a problem. Here you have a city and a hospital that's built below sea level. All the critical components to. To help that thing survive are built under sea level. And they're like, this thing's gonna die soon. Long story short is, like, this thing was gonna cost millions and millions of dollars to, like, replace. And so, like, we're not dealing with that at all.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And who, if you're thinking, like, who could have predicted Katrina was gonna hit and the levees were gonna fail? I actually, like, looked at an actuary table for this because, like, actuaries actually have to figure this out. Like, we talk about this in the city group building thing. It's like a 1 or 700 year storm versus a 1, 100 year storm. Like, they have to sort all this stuff out.
>> Taylor: Actuaries would be the guys who were doing this because they're talking about, like, the money. That totally makes sense.
>> Farz: There you go. And the answer to the Question like, who would have guessed that a hurricane like Katrina would hit and the levees would fail? The answer is fema. FEMA actually literally knew this.
>> Taylor: So this is. I'm going to interrupt you a bunch of times. This is the first time I ever heard of FEMA was Katrina.
>> Farz: Oh, I thought you meant this story. I was like, you're way behind.
>> Taylor: No, I mean Katrina was the first time I've ever heard of it.
>> Farz: So in 2004, which is like one year before Hurricane Katrina hit, the federal government ran a planning exercise for a fictitious hurricane called Hurricane Pam, which was a slow moving Cat 3. Again, not even the most powerful like it's. But it's just slow moving. It's like always like over the area. And they ran the model to predict what would happen if this type of hurricane were to like station itself over New Orleans and the levees were to fail. And it told you everything. Like I literally wrote down beat for beat. That's exactly what happened. Like it was exactly what happened 12 months later.
>> Taylor: Wow.
>> Farz: So anyways, within Memorial, the seventh floor wasn't actually theirs. It was owned by a separate company. So a separate company owned the seventh floor of Memorial Slash Baptist Hospital. That was their place to do a lot of. It's not palliative care. It was a lot of like intense care issues like people who need like respirators or like things that like you have to have electronics to sustain life. Basically the day of that company was called Life Care. And yeah it was, yeah, it was like a hospital to hospital and yeah, they just owned that whole seventh floor. And the whole point of it was it was just like very, very sick people who were ventilator dependent and there was no backups beyond the generators if something were to go wrong basically unless the person was there to deal with it. So that was a situation they were finding themselves in. There were nine people on the seventh floor who died on the Thursday after Katrina had so four days after Katrina hit. And we're going to get a little bit into the story. We are going to talk about the differences between what happens when a hospital leases property versus owns the property. If you think about it, if it's your building, you're responsible for the evacuation plan for that building. Right. Like it's your stuff. Right. Life Care was responsible for their own evacuation process. So they're based out of Texas. Like they're not in Louisiana. Nobody from life here outside of the contracting staff that are there are from the headquarters. And so they don't actually have an evacuation Plan if something were to happen outside of the government, which, like, historically, like, just do not depend on the government.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I mean, I feel like every building I've ever worked in has an evacuation plan.
>> Farz: So this is different because. So there's a whole systematic thing I was going to talk about later, but I'll talk about it now. This was a failure from the city, the state, the federal government, and the companies that own these hospitals of, like, how we ended up in this situation. You have the seventh floor, which is, you have the whole hospital, just 2,000 people. A lot of them are like, civilians, like, just people who are there for the neighborhood. Yeah. The seventh floor is like the sickest of the sickest that are, like, being leased out to this company called Life Care. Right, right. Life Care has no plan, but they're in the building that functions the entire apparatus of the hospital.
Anna Powell volunteered to work the storm team that operates hospitals during hurricanes
Okay, get this woman at the center of this story. Her name is Anna Powell. And from everything I read about her, like, she, she's like the pinnacle of doctors, right? Like, like, she's a family person. Like, loves her patients. Patients love her. She's well respected. She's a practitioner, but also professor. When hurricanes hidden places that could be compromised because of hurricanes. Usually there's a. What's called a storm team that operates places that are critical, like hospitals. And that's like a skeleton crew that's like the bare minimum. Most of the high level doctors, the people who have like, you know, beach houses everywhere, like, they, they, they leave, they go elsewhere. Anna Powell actually volunteered to work the storm team. Like, she actually was like, this is my community. I'm gonna, I'm gonna serve my community. And, like, that's what I do. And so she actually volunteered for it.
There was no plan for evacuation of hospitalized patients during Katrina
So let's get into the timeline. So we have Sunday, August 28, and everybody's aware that Katrina is coming. You have about 2,000 people occupying the hospital. On Monday the 29th, you have landfall, which is Katrina hitting windows, getting blown out. The power grid fails, which means the generators in the basement kick on.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: The storms, the storm's gone. The storm leaves that day. That's it, it's done, it's over. Tuesday the 30th is when the levees fail and the water column starts going up. And by the end of the day, the hospital is an island outside of the Superdome. Like, you have the Superdome, you have the hospital. Like, there's like, the two safe havens that exist. The city's official disaster plan was to treat hospitals like, stay in place facilities you might remember, like, what was his name? Nagin? I think it was. It was the mayor who said, if you're. If you're in the city, you have to try and evacuate, with the one exception being people who are in the hospital, because that's a different challenge you got to deal with. So there was no. There was no plan for evacuation of those people. Helicopters would show up every now and then. A lot of times it was Coast Guard or the National Guard. And, yeah, there wasn't a lot of options in terms of how people. How the staff could deal with the patients who were in the hospital. One report I read said were dealing with patients like they were luggage on baggage conveyors, which can be good.
>> Taylor: I just. I feel like that's, like. That feels also kind of unfair. Like, what are you supposed to do? I don't know.
>> Farz: So. Exactly that. Exactly that. There was. There was some attempts to transport some people through water boats or whatever, what they're called, those boats, the big fans on the back of them. There was some attempts to migrate those people out to dry land. That happened every now and then. On Wednesday the 31st, around 2 in the morning, the floodwater reached the electrical switching and it shut down the generator, basically.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: So that meant there was no. No ventilators, no monitors, no IV pumps, no elevators, no air conditioning and no running water.
>> Taylor: And then, like, just so many people must die instantly. Is that real?
>> Farz: So. So, yeah, not instantly, but there's. There's legitimate reports. I wrote down that it sounds like the poop cruise from Carnival because. Because. Because they were saying that there was people physically just standing in front of ventilators, squeezing them. Like, squeezing the pumps. Yeah, yeah. Can you imagine that? Like. Like, you're like, this person's life depends on you just standing here just like, clapping like that.
>> Taylor: Oh, man.
>> Farz: The solution was obviously try to evacuate some people as much as you possibly could. There was a delineation between types of people you would. You would classify for. For sending out outside of the hospital for further support, yet a 1, 2, 3 system. Which was the healthiest people. This is weird. I don't know how to, like. I don't know how to describe this. The number one people were the healthiest. So get them out first. Number two were the next to guess, and number three were the do not resuscitate class.
>> Taylor: I feel like that's like battlefield rules, you know? Like, if someone's close enough closer to dying, you save them last because they're probably gonna die anyway, right?
>> Farz: I know there's Something weird about that.
>> Taylor: It's weird.
>> Farz: It feels.
>> Taylor: It feels bad because you're like, you need the most help, but I'm not gonna help you because I can save five. I can save five lives in the time it would take me to save yours. Probably.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: You know?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: And I. I see. I get what you're saying with that feels. It feels.
>> Farz: It feels wrong, but that logically, there's a logic to it. And also, like, when I first read this, I was like, I don't know, I probably tried to figure out first, but this is why I'm not in charge of anything. So. So the number three priority, the last priority, were the DNR patients. So these are the patients that were like, do not resuscitate. That doesn't mean, like, kill them. That just means, like, if I do die on my own, like, don't try to save me any further, basically.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: The. The one piece this that I thought was very interesting was like, again, there was no process around this. It was being instituted by anybody other than the people that are in that building. Like, they were making up the process as they go, which I don't know
>> Taylor: what else to do.
>> Farz: Well, I. It's more of an indictment of corporations, everyone else, and governments than anything else. It's like. Like, is it that, like, the government literally ran a model saying that this is what's going to happen, and nobody in that building knew what was happening?
Nine patients on Life Care's seventh floor died after Hurricane Katrina
So we're at Thursday, September 1st, which is the fourth day after Katrina had passed. Apparently at this point, the building is 110 degrees right, and super hot again, poop cruise. Word apparently comes down that by the end of that day, everybody has to be out. So you have to get everybody out to that helipad or on the water boats to get them out of this place, basically. So imagine like your doctor, you've probably been awake for four plus days at this point. You're not eating or drinking water, and you're trying to take care of all these people. And meanwhile, like, the staff of the seventh floor, they were. They were like, just mostly like palliative care people. Like, they're not in charge, boss. Kind people like you have Memorial doctors are the ones who are having. Make decisions for what's going on on the seventh floor, basically, at this point.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Here's what is alleged to have happened. According to Life Care, which is the seventh floor. Owners of the leasehold, the pharma, the pharmacy director there said that Dr. Powell, this main physician in charge, told him that morning that a decision had been made that lethal doses should be administered to patients. And he says that he also witnessed her holding a bunch of vials of morphine in Medazepam.
>> Taylor: That is like some Schindler's list stuff.
>> Farz: It kind of is. It kind of is, yeah. According to witnesses, Pal and two other nurses, a woman named Sherry and Lori, they were going room to room with syringes and they were. Basically what was being put up by witnesses was that they were telling patients this, this is going to make you feel better. That's what they were for. The same people. By Thursday evening, nine of those patients on the sun for the Life Care patients were dead.
>> Taylor: Mm.
>> Farz: All within a rough three hour window of each other. Like they all died.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: One patient. Man, this is what sucks. Like I get it, I get it.
>> Taylor: I'm a hero. I'm a hero right now. I don't want to be taken out on like a helicopter, out on a boat and all the things. I don't want to sit there in my own death in 110 degrees in humidity.
>> Farz: I know, but. I know but it's like, like it's more so like I'm like thinking to myself like if I ever got admitted to the hospital not knowing a hurricane, not knowing that this horrific was gonna happen, I'd be like, just like keep me at home in like a cryogenic state and then take me later, you know, Like I don't know. I feel like, I feel like I would have. Anyways, there's one patient.
>> Taylor: That's not an option.
>> Farz: I know it's not an option. I'm just saying if I, if I know there's one guy, this guy named Emmett Everett. This, he was a 61 year old man and he had a lot of problems. The guy was like nearly £400 and he was also paralyzed from the waist down. Anyways, he was there in the hospital like again like he was there for non necessary treatment, right? Like he was there. He was there for like a bowel obstruction that like they could have done any other time. Like our only solution is to try to take this 380 pound dude down like flight. How are we going to do like it's impossible. We haven't slept in a couple of days. Nobody's had water. Like how are we going to do this? So the only options were let's just leave him there. He dies alone in the dark in 110 degree weather and however many days that takes.
>> Taylor: Or yeah, we do something worse.
>> Farz: There's one doctor, it's definitely worse. There's one doctor, this guy named Bryant King, who he started suspecting that doctors were going to do like euthanasia, and he got on the boat and got the out of there. He quoted the CNN saying, quote, I'd rather be considered a person who abandoned patients than someone who aided in eliminating patients. And that was his perspective on it. But why is so dicey?
>> Taylor: That's. That's gross.
>> Farz: That's kind of gross, right?
>> Taylor: That's gross. Like, I feel like that's. If it's like do no harm is your. What is it the thing that you have to like, say as a doctor hippopotamus of Hippocratic. You leaving, abandoning them is worse?
>> Farz: I think so.
>> Taylor: I don't know, but I think it's worse. Yeah.
Nine people died on Texas hospital's seventh floor from apparent euthanasia
>> Farz: So I'm, I'm going to bring that topic back up here in a little bit. On Friday, the Friday before they found these people, the last 2,000 people had been evacuated and the dead people were put in the chapel and they just stayed there for like 10 days, baking in the sewage sun for 10 days.
>> Taylor: There's so much stuff about Katrina where I, I remember seeing something where they were like, if. Even if you have your family jewels in your refrigerator in your freezer, do not open your refrigerator to get them. Throw it away. Like, it's just so awful in there. Like, everything was just so. Because it's so humid and wet and moldy on top of everything else, you know?
>> Farz: Yeah, yeah, we have that now in Texas. The floods hit Texas and all these people on Lake Travis are like, trying to get their kids out there to wake them up. Like, this thing is full of fecal matter that washed in from 50 states away. Like, it's just, it's just s***, water, sewage. Like, do not put your kids in here for the next, like six months. Anyways, so. So an investigation opened into what happened to all these people. And there was a all star team of forensics that were kind of put together and they kind of led to the conclusion that this was euthanasia. These nine, probably on the seventh floor, died by being killed. It's a weird dicey thing. I was researching this a bit like in palliative care. Palliative care, it's like pain reduction care. It's like, you know that person is going to die anyways. You're just trying to make it like less painful. Like a lot of times in palliative care, like, what you have to administer could be fatal. And it's like subject to the doctor's intent of like, whether they try to kill that person or not, basically, like, that's, that's kind of what it boils down to. But it was clear by the version these folks gave on the prosecution side, this was, this was euthanasia. There was a coroner for the county, a guy named Frank Minyard, who also consulted other pathologists on this. There's a guy named Steve Carsh who was like, dude, people been baking in the sun in sewage water for, like, days. I can't tell you what killed them. Like, like, there's nothing. It's just gelatin. Like, I don't, I don't know.
>> Taylor: So what is.
>> Farz: That was his perspective.
>> Taylor: What is the definition of euthanasia? Like, I don't know.
>> Farz: I, I, I don't know. Legally, I would assume it's something along the lines of voluntary suicide, but suicide's a term of art. So the volunteer killing
>> Taylor: pet. Right. Use the same word for that, don't you?
>> Farz: Yeah, this is, this is where. Yeah, this is where the Jack Morgan thing took me. So anyways, you have, in 2006, you have Dr. Powell and two. The two nurses who were witnessed going to these rooms with these needles, charged for secondary murder. There was a bunch of people that were part of that. There was, like, about five or six people that they thought were killed because of this. And the prosecutor was very young. Ho is we're gonna do justice. It felt like a real. It reminded me a lot of the Duke rape case where that prosecutor was like, just so, like, we're gonna solve this forever. Like, I don't know. Trying to be a do gooder can have its false faults.
>> Taylor: What were the families saying of the people who had died?
>> Farz: I'll tell you, we'll get to that. Again, remember, like, you have, like, a grand jury's pulled together from the constituents of that jurisdiction, right? So you pulled together a grand jury of people who have to look at the evidence, but they live through Katrina, right? And it's like, can you believe someone in these conditions would. It's like they're like, yeah, yeah, all, all of us would understand that. And so they also, it's worth noting that a second degree murder charge, which is what she was being attempted indicted on, carried a life sentence in, In Louisiana. And so all these people who were people who, from that community who knew Dr. Poe were like, yeah, no, we're not, we're not doing that like that. She doesn't deserve that at all.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Eventually, she did not get indicted. She was released in her conviction or charge. Sorry, the charges on conviction they were all expunged. The state paid for all of her legal fees. The lawmakers again formally apologized to her. And there was actually a class action lawsuit that the. The seventh floor hospital called Tennant owned and paid up to the tune of 25 million. And Dr. Powell, who was also in the building during this entire time, was able to collect a piece of that. And so she got a piece of the settlement as well.
>> Taylor: Good.
>> Farz: It's worth noting that she afterwards went on as advocate for three laws that eventually passed legislator in Louis. Legislation in Louisiana around granting health care workers immunity in cases of disaster relief. In terms of what they're doing in that moment, one thing we brought up earlier that's worth mentioning, just so you know, there were a lot of hospice care, slash nursing home slash hospital workers who left. Who literally left people to rotten sewage alive during Katrina. None of them were charged. None of them were charged with anything because apparently abandonment is not a problem. But if, but in her perspective, she's like, what are they gonna leave these people just like rotten here for?
>> Taylor: Like, I think that's worse.
>> Farz: Seven days.
>> Taylor: Like, I mean, like, I feel like you. That's your responsibility as a doctor. Like if, if there's an emergency, like when we worked at our job in downtown la, I had a map that I printed out and how I could walk to my kids daycare. It would have taken me like 10 hours. But I was like, if there is a catastrophic earthquake and we cannot drive there, you know, I will leave my job immediately, obviously, who cares about my job? And I will walk to my children's daycare and go get them, you know, because my job isn't saving people and helping people. But if the doctor. I feel like you make that decision saying you're going to do that, like, I should stay.
>> Farz: I feel, I feel like you shared that map with me because I remember I had to go to your kids daycare. Some weird time during the day. I was like, I was like, well, Taylor says I gotta.
>> Taylor: Just in case you and I, you and I would have walked there. We would have climbed over the broken freeway and walked to get my kids out of daycare. We would have done it.
>> Farz: Because wasn't it daycare painted like a weird dark blue?
ABC Education closed after Covid
>> Taylor: Yeah, it was like dark blue. It's called ABC Education. It's closed. It closed after Covid. But it was wonderful. Oh my God, it was lovely.
>> Farz: So, but, but anyways, like, the whole point is like, imagine being in that position where like you're like looking at a guy and you're Like, I'm sorry, but you're £400. Like, there's no shot of getting you out of here without, like, killing half of us trying to get you out.
>> Taylor: And.
>> Farz: Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, it sucks. Like, it actually does suck. Like, that's got to be a horrible, horrible.
>> Taylor: It's not an easy decision, you know, it's hard.
Daniel shepherd: Katrina has a lot of weird geology stuff involving Katrina
>> Farz: Which, some point, I would like to do an episode on Katrina because I don't understand a lot of it because there's a lot of weird geology stuff involving Katrina that I don't like. I actually mean, totally honest. I don't actually know what Levy is.
>> Taylor: I said Levy a lot, very confidently during this episode. But I also am not sure what levy.
>> Farz: Is it a. I don't totally know.
>> Taylor: A tiny dam?
>> Farz: Is it like a baby dam? If you work on baby dams, can you tell us? Can you write to us?
>> Taylor: I mean, I think it's just like a wall. I think maybe it moves to, like, hold to let ships come in and out. Another guess. I don't know if you're a Levy expert.
>> Farz: I think it's called a lock.
>> Taylor: Oh, that's a lock. You're right. That's definitely true. Yeah.
>> Farz: No, Katrina has a lot of weird nuance to it. I think we could, like, spend years researching that.
>> Taylor: I'm sure there are many, many, many books and things. But I. But I remember, you know, just like, you know, knowing, like, the horror and then just the humidity and the. On top of everything else, the heat.
>> Farz: Know. But if you're listening and you would kill your patients versus let them rot in sewage for a week, tell us. Tell us what you would do.
>> Taylor: I think.
>> Farz: Come on, doctor, 100%. How situate.
>> Taylor: I'm not even hesitating. I think she did absolutely the right thing. Like, otherwise, I think abandonment is so much worse. That guy. I'm like, really? I'm mad at the guy who was like, I'd rather be known as someone who abandons people. Ew.
>> Farz: I think that is gross.
>> Taylor: I think that's really gross. Yeah, this is gross.
>> Farz: I'd like to use phrase it as gross because I was wondering, like, how I felt about it. I was like, oh, yeah, okay. When Taylor said that, I was like, yeah, it's gross. That's how you feel about it? It's gross.
>> Taylor: Yeah, it's gross. I don't like it.
>> Farz: That's my story.
>> Taylor: Cool. Interesting. I hadn't heard of her. Because you're right. There's so much stuff happened that happened.
>> Farz: Yeah, I wish. Well, I don't Wish any of this, but if I. If Katrina were to happen, I kind of wish I was my age. Like, I actually understand it more than when it did happen, because when it happened, I was, like, just trying to, like, go to bars.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: It was, like, on the news.
>> Taylor: You weren't, like, critically thinking about it,
>> Farz: you know, I remember Kanye calling George W. Bush a racist. Like, that was fun. In front of Mike Myers. Remember that?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And then he goes on to, like, created N*** paraphernalia. That was fun.
>> Taylor: D***, that guy's not. Not well. Yeah.
>> Farz: I. I usually ask you to read off listener mail, but in this case, Daniel shepherd, our.
>> Taylor: I have listener mail, too, but you go first.
>> Farz: Or I have a listener. He. I actually talked to chat GBT about this, too, before Daniel mess with me. But. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna give Daniel the credit for this. Basically, every other country defunded girl sports when Title 9 passed.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: Us. And that is why women's international soccer is good.
>> Taylor: That's why we're good, because we invested in it because of Title 9.
>> Farz: And literally every other country de. Invested in it at the same time.
>> Taylor: Just, like, happened to be around the same time.
>> Farz: I mean, we're talking about, like, range of, like, 10.
>> Taylor: 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. And then as far as I understand, we invested in it more because you get more money the more teams you have.
>> Farz: I mean, I assume there's a logical financial reason for doing so.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Interesting.
Women's professional baseball will start on August 1st
Well, good press, but I'm excited for August 1st, women's professional baseball to start.
>> Farz: Daniel also. Oh, my God. Hold on. Let me pull this up. Daniel, I have a actual player in the league, Amanda Gianna. So anyways, Daniel also sent me video of her talking about the. The difference between the MLB and the wpbl. And it was incredible. Like. Like, she just, like, walks through, like. Like, here's the differences. Like, here's what we care about, the defensive positions. So I. I'm gonna send this video to you.
>> Taylor: Yeah. Yeah.
>> Farz: It was really. It was really cool. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Follow her on the gram.
>> Farz: Anyways, that's what I had.
>> Taylor: I love it. Oh, she's having a baby. I have mail from Morgan and Nadine and I also talked about this a second. Let me grab my texts from her.
There are some countries where we say what they say in their language
And there's some countries where we say what they. What they say in their language, and some company countries where we don't, like, based on, like, the language that you are speaking. So there's two different things. There's an endonym for which is the name that a place Uses for itself that locals. Locals say. So Cabo Verde is the endonym. If you live there, you'd be like, I live in Cabo Verde. But you say that in, like, Portuguese. And then the exonym is the name used by outsiders. So we say Cape Verde from the outside. So there's some examples that, like, I wouldn't say. When I'm talking to you in English about Germany, I wouldn't say Deutschland, obviously, but in. But you know, in Germany, in German, you say Deutschland when you're saying Germany. So some countries, like Turkey, has asked everyone to start spelling turkey with, like, the umlaut, which is like T umlaut, R, K, I, Y, e, rather than turkey, like the bird. And in. In English. So there's. That is their endonym is saying Turkey spelled that way. And then the exonym is spelling it like Turkey the bird. Like, we've been doing it. So they've asked people to switch, and we are, like, working on that. So like my text, you say during the game, let's. Like we see up in the. Up on the top of the screen, it was like ESP vs ARG. So Espana is obviously the endonym of how you say Spain in Spanish. But we would. We wouldn't say Espana unless we're speaking in Spanish. And then I was talking to Nadine, who's in Canada, and she was saying how she would say the United States rather than America because she would think first, like, America is part of North America, which is not just the United States. And then I was telling her that as. As someone who lives in the United States, I use America and the United States interchangeably.
>> Farz: Wait, so is. Sorry, Cabo is endo and cape is endo.
>> Taylor: Yep.
>> Farz: Okay.
>> Taylor: Cape is exo. Like, that's what other people call them. And then if you live there, you would be the endo, which is the. In. In Cabo Verde, they call it Cabo Verde. But, like, in Cape Verde, they call it Cabo Verde.
>> Farz: Interesting.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Is Nadine, like, a linguistics and Dean
>> Taylor: are just chatting about it. Morgan, I think, just knows a bunch of trivia because she watches Jeopardy. All the time.
>> Farz: League.
>> Taylor: No, she was in it before, and then she left, and she's, like, smarter than us. Like, she. Like the people that introduce her to Learner league are people who have been, like, on Jeopardy. Morgan, you're so smart. You know, everyone. That's it. It's interesting.
>> Farz: It is interesting. It's. I might do ca. I was looking into, like, the. They're not directly connected, like, this was not like assisted suicide is more so like self prescribed suicide. Like I was looking into like the suicide movement in general in the US and some states are gravitating more towards it. I, I thought there was something about like that that was, that was. I don't know. There's something there. There's like, there's.
>> Taylor: It's, it's interesting and I think it's a. Interesting. I think maybe like the what is euthanasia Question that I had. Interesting. Like why do we do it to our pets and not our people?
>> Farz: I mean you have to introduce it. You have to introduce it. It's like when I was a kid if you told me like when I got like strep throat I had the choice to kill myself or live with it.
>> Taylor: I kill myself, I'll never feel normal again. I will never be able to swallow.
>> Farz: There's, there's like degrees to it.
>> Taylor: That's fair.
>> Farz: Anyways, that might be a, that might be an upcoming series. So let us know if you're interested in, in. In that topic.
>> Taylor: Fun. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. If you have any suggestions or ideas. Doom to fell podmail.com Kira emailed us some ideas. One of our listeners as well this week. So thank you and Doom to Fell Pod and all social.