At least 91 patients died in hospitals and 63 in nursing homes not fully evacuated until five days after the storm, according to the interviews, although those numbers are believed to be incomplete. In the end, withering heat, not floodwaters, proved the deadliest killer, with temperatures soaring to 110 degrees in stifling buildings without enough generator power for air-conditioning.

In some cases, FEMA hindered evacuation efforts.

Yet when private companies dispatched helicopters, trucks and buses to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes, officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency commandeered some of them for other uses, hospital and nursing home officials said.

By the time help arrived, it came too late for some.

As military helicopters equipped with seats, not stretchers, ferried healthy adults to safety, patients awaiting evacuation died, hospital staff members said.

The linked article contains a wealth of detail about communications breakdowns, the state legislature's refusal to appropriate adequate money for nonprofit hospitals, and the failure of anyone to notice that multiple nursing homes had contracted with the same bus companies to evacuate patients, assuring that there wouldn't be enough busses to meet the demand. It makes for grim reading, and should be included in disaster management textbooks to assure these mistakes aren't made again.