Nov. 6, 2007
BOOK REVIEW: New Orleans Doctor Tells What Really Happened at Baptist Hospital During Katrina in 'Code Blue'
By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Among the urban legends in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was the allegation that the staff practiced euthanasia on 45 of the 2,000 patients being evacuated from Baptist Hospital on Napoleon Street in Uptown.
Dr. Richard Deichmann, chief of medicine at the facility, officially known as Memorial Medical Center, sets the record straight in an engrossing account, "Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoir" (Rooftop Publishing, Bloomington, IN, 204 pages, $19.95, available from Amazon.com).
New Orleans native Deichmann, a triathlete, needed all his physical training in a week-long ordeal supervising the evacuation by helicopter and boats from the flooded 350-bed facility.
He rejects the charges of euthanasia, which were investigated by state, saying that deaths beyond the normal at any hospital were the result of stupid decisions by local, state and federal officials. He lays much of the blame on Louisiana State Troopers, who limited the hours of evacuation by boats to higher ground. In addition, the feds halted private helicopter evacuation -- by the efficient Acadian Air Ambulance service -- resulting in extra deaths, Deichmann says.
Helicopter evacuation flights by the Coast Guard were later provided and Deichmann has high praise for the Coast Guard. Another episode involved a man from Texas who volunteered his boat to move patients and staff to higher ground where they could be more easily evacuated. Deichmann charges that law enforcement officials turned back other boaters who wanted to help in the evacuation.
In addition to his own experiences, Deichmann relates the harrowing ordeal of fellow physician Greg Vorhoff (Pages 85ff) who went on a quest by foot, airboat and hitched rides to alert Mayor Ray Nagin, other officials and the news media of the hospital's plight.
Vorhoff, arriving at a Sam's Club parking lot that had been turned into a command center, describes Eddie Compass, the dispirited chief of the New Orleans Police Department. Many of his officers had abandoned the city or even joined the looters. Vorhoff's conversation with Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee (P. 86) reminds us of Nagin's failure to get buses to evacuate the city: "The buses, I can't get the damned buses," Lee told Dr. Vorhoff.
A few days before Katrina struck the city at the end of August 2005, Deichmann and his wife Cecile were helping their teen-aged daughter Beth get settled in her freshman dorm at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cecile Deichmann, also a physician, and her husband had their residencies at UNC Medical Center, after graduating from Tulane Medical School, where they met.
While others were leaving the city in one of the nation's largest evacuation migrations until the recent one in Southern California, the Deichmanns were headed back to the Crescent City to rejoin their two other daughters and their pets. The story of Deichmann and the family yellow Lab Maggie is particularly poignant.
The book has photographs and a map, but lacks an index. Still, it's one of the best first-person accounts I've read of the devastation of New Orleans in August and September of 2005. I see the basis for an excellent motion picture in "Code Blue."
About the Author
Richard Deichmann graduated from Tulane medical school and completed his training in Internal Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC. He moved back to his hometown after completing his training in 1986 and had practiced at Baptist Hospital until Katrina. He continues his work as a physician, teacher, and clinical researcher at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. Interested readers can contact the author at www.rdeichmann.com.
BOOK REVIEW: New Orleans Doctor Tells What Really Happened at Baptist Hospital During Katrina in 'Code Blue'
By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic
Among the urban legends in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was the allegation that the staff practiced euthanasia on 45 of the 2,000 patients being evacuated from Baptist Hospital on Napoleon Street in Uptown.
Dr. Richard Deichmann, chief of medicine at the facility, officially known as Memorial Medical Center, sets the record straight in an engrossing account, "Code Blue: A Katrina Physician's Memoir" (Rooftop Publishing, Bloomington, IN, 204 pages, $19.95, available from Amazon.com).
New Orleans native Deichmann, a triathlete, needed all his physical training in a week-long ordeal supervising the evacuation by helicopter and boats from the flooded 350-bed facility.
He rejects the charges of euthanasia, which were investigated by state, saying that deaths beyond the normal at any hospital were the result of stupid decisions by local, state and federal officials. He lays much of the blame on Louisiana State Troopers, who limited the hours of evacuation by boats to higher ground. In addition, the feds halted private helicopter evacuation -- by the efficient Acadian Air Ambulance service -- resulting in extra deaths, Deichmann says.
Helicopter evacuation flights by the Coast Guard were later provided and Deichmann has high praise for the Coast Guard. Another episode involved a man from Texas who volunteered his boat to move patients and staff to higher ground where they could be more easily evacuated. Deichmann charges that law enforcement officials turned back other boaters who wanted to help in the evacuation.
In addition to his own experiences, Deichmann relates the harrowing ordeal of fellow physician Greg Vorhoff (Pages 85ff) who went on a quest by foot, airboat and hitched rides to alert Mayor Ray Nagin, other officials and the news media of the hospital's plight.
Vorhoff, arriving at a Sam's Club parking lot that had been turned into a command center, describes Eddie Compass, the dispirited chief of the New Orleans Police Department. Many of his officers had abandoned the city or even joined the looters. Vorhoff's conversation with Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee (P. 86) reminds us of Nagin's failure to get buses to evacuate the city: "The buses, I can't get the damned buses," Lee told Dr. Vorhoff.
A few days before Katrina struck the city at the end of August 2005, Deichmann and his wife Cecile were helping their teen-aged daughter Beth get settled in her freshman dorm at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Cecile Deichmann, also a physician, and her husband had their residencies at UNC Medical Center, after graduating from Tulane Medical School, where they met.
While others were leaving the city in one of the nation's largest evacuation migrations until the recent one in Southern California, the Deichmanns were headed back to the Crescent City to rejoin their two other daughters and their pets. The story of Deichmann and the family yellow Lab Maggie is particularly poignant.
The book has photographs and a map, but lacks an index. Still, it's one of the best first-person accounts I've read of the devastation of New Orleans in August and September of 2005. I see the basis for an excellent motion picture in "Code Blue."
About the Author
Richard Deichmann graduated from Tulane medical school and completed his training in Internal Medicine at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC. He moved back to his hometown after completing his training in 1986 and had practiced at Baptist Hospital until Katrina. He continues his work as a physician, teacher, and clinical researcher at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans. Interested readers can contact the author at www.rdeichmann.com.
