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The Horrifying Choices Hurricane Katrina Forced On Doctors And Nurses
A miniseries beginning Aug. 12 recalls the calamity, but you can read the article and book that inspired it now
What medical disaster has brought the most heartbreaking scenes to 21st-century TV screens?
You might think of the exhausted doctors and nurses working in overflowing intensive care units early in the Covid-19 pandemic, or the medics in underground shelters treating Ukrainian victims of Russian bombs.
But before them came Hurricane Katrina, the Category 5 storm that in August 2005 caused 1,833 deaths, especially along the Gulf Coast. One of its most horrific tragedies occurred after the hurricane trapped more than 200 patients at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans.
An eight-part account of that disaster, based on Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death and a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown reprint, 2016), begins on Apple TV+ on August 12 and continues weekly on Friday nights through September…
