After the Army helicopter dropped some food supplies that turned out to be just three or four boxes with tin cans of Vienna sausages on the roof of Memorial Hospital, not one helicopter came back to help the patients who’d been carried to the roof on sheet slings.
Days went by. All food and medicine was gone at Memorial Hospital. Red Cross, U.S. Army, Coast Guard, and National Guard helicopters flew over. Doctors and nurses waved frantically.
Finally, “boats operated by private volunteers began arriving and taking four or five persons at a time. The remaining hospital patients and staff – approximately 2000 people — were evacuated by citizen volunteers.”
— A partial summary of Raw Story’s stunning interview with a noted human rights attorney who volunteered at the hospital where his wife is a physician. (And read the incredible story of three Duke University students who helped people in New Orleans.)