Confronting your inner coward

[shereads]

In Pure's thread, we're debating whether we'd leave our pets behind if we weren't allowed to take them with us during an evacuation. Meanwhile on CNN, there's an update of a Katrina story about the ultimate abandonment: the 32 elderly patients who drowned in their beds after the owners of a rural Lousiana nursing home rowed themselves to safety.

Earlier reports said the entire staff had abandoned the patients. It now turns out that staff members saved 38 of the 70 patients after the owners left. A nurse's aid tells how she and other employees lifted bed-ridden and wheelchair-bound patients through windows as the floodwaters rose, dragging some of them onto the roof and setting others afloat on mattresses. They worked until the water level inside the building made more rescues impossible. In the confusion, she says she didn't know the owners weren't part of the rescue effort until later.

Adult children of the 32 dead have asked the state to consider a criminal investigation of the nursing home owners, who had allegedly refused offers of vehicles and other help from the parrish.

Jesus. I don't consider myself a particularly courageous person, but I know I wouldn't have done that. I'm too much of a coward to live with it on my conscience.

I've reached my reality threshhold again. Time for a sabbatical.

Who has a synonym for penis?

 

[sophia jane]

Who has a synonym for penis?

Throbbing member.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Weenie.


And I'm not a very brave perosn either, but I know I could never live with myself after doing something like that.

The really sad part is that the people who did that probablly worry more about what happend to their building than the people it used to house.

 

[Liar]

.......wrong friggin thread.

 

[CharleyH]

In Pure's thread, we're debating whether we'd leave our pets behind if we weren't allowed to take them with us during an evacuation. Meanwhile on CNN, there's an update of a Katrina story about the ultimate abandonment: the 32 elderly patients who drowned in their beds after the owners of a rural Lousiana nursing home rowed themselves to safety.

Earlier reports said the entire staff had abandoned the patients. It now turns out that staff members saved 38 of the 70 patients after the owners left. A nurse's aid tells how she and other employees lifted bed-ridden and wheelchair-bound patients through windows as the floodwaters rose, dragging some of them onto the roof and setting others afloat on mattresses. They worked until the water level inside the building made more rescues impossible. In the confusion, she says she didn't know the owners weren't part of the rescue effort until later.

Adult children of the 32 dead have asked the state to consider a criminal investigation of the nursing home owners, who had allegedly refused offers of vehicles and other help from the parrish.

I could say my opinon about the sue mentality of the US, but it would be taken wrong, I am certain.

 

[yui]

I could say my opinon about the sue mentality of the US, but it would be taken wrong, I am certain.

The US is undoubtedly litigious by nature, Charley, but just to be clear, the criminal investigation referenced in the article isn't the same as a civil suit; criminal law and civil law are two different things in the US judicial system.

Poor, poor people.

 

[CharleyH]

Poor, poor people.

I was not trying to refer to this, but I see your point.

 

[CharleyH]

Throbbing member.

"armoured" and ready to attack?

(LOL - I lost that in my blindness, sadly)

 

[minsue]

Nothing like tragedy to bring out who people really are. That's horrifying.

 

[SeaCat]

At the risk of alienating some of the members of this board I do have to say the owners of this facility, if they did abandon their charges, need to be publicly flogged before being slowly drowned. Why? They, if they did abandon these people as has been mentioned, have shown themselves to be completely without honor. They have abandoned those whose welfare, whose very lives were their responsibility. If they are guilty of this crime then they have shown themselves to be nothing more than animals with a destructive bent and need to be destroyed.

Cat

 

[CharleyH]

At the risk of alienating some of the members of this board I do have to say the owners of this facility, if they did abandon their charges, need to be publicly flogged before being slowly drowned. Why? They, if they did abandon these people as has been mentioned, have shown themselves to be completely without honor. They have abandoned those whose welfare, whose very lives were their responsibility. If they are guilty of this crime then they have shown themselves to be nothing more than animals with a destructive bent and need to be destroyed.

Cat

No one has responsibility, but to their own life? What are you asking?

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Who has a synonym for penis?

Vella says, "Bush."

 

[CharleyH]

Nothing like tragedy to bring out who people really are. That's horrifying.

How so, Min?

 

[BlackShanglan]

... they have shown themselves to be nothing more than animals with a destructive bent and need to be destroyed.

Don't go dragging us into this. You humans always try that when you're being your most damned human.

For the record, agreed. They're a disgusting pack of yahoos, in the Swiftian sense.

Shanglan

 

[SeaCat]

No one has responsibility, but to their own life? What are you asking?

??????

Ahhhh but these people did have a responsibility. By owning and running this facility they took responsibility for the safety and well being of their patients. If I am asking a question then I am asking that it be proven that they did indeed abandon their clients/patients. (This does strike a nerve with me because of my being in the medical field.)

Cat

 

[CharleyH]

??????

Ahhhh but these people did have a responsibility. By owning and running this facility they took responsibility for the safety and well being of their patients. If I am asking a question then I am asking that it be proven that they did indeed abandon their clients/patients. (This does strike a nerve with me because of my being in the medical field.)

Cat

don't ask this, you are getting yourself into an argument you can't understand love. Explain more, though. Your opinion is valued and loved, even if not agreed upon, as one who was in the medical field. You are asking I prove what I don't believe? How do you know ... for certain, what you state?

 

[English Lady]

I was watching a BBC documentary on Katrina the other day and they were interviewing a british citizen who'd been sneaked out behind the backs of the other local refugees at the superdome. She was holding a little local girl at the time and she was telling her guilt at having to leave the poor girl behind.

I just turned to my husband and said

"I know it's easy for me to say here, but I wouldn't have gone. I'd have stayed."

And he replied

"But after days of that..."

and I repeated "I'd stay. I just couldn't leave."

And I meant it. I couldn't leave people suffering, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did, for me leaving, would be too hard, I'd not be able to do it. I always take the easy way out!

 

[Liar]

How so, Min?

How not so, Charley?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

don't ask this, you are getting yourself into an argument you can't understand love. Explain more, though. Your opinion is valued and loved, even if not agreed upon, as one who was in the medical field. You are asking I prove what I don't believe? How do you know ... for certain, what you state?

Jesus, Charley! Just was is it about "abandon helpless old people under your care to drown in a flood while you save your own ass" that you find so morally defensible?

 

[minsue]

How so, Min?

Unlike many of the others, I honestly can't say I wouldn't do the same. I've been proven wrong in the past when I've said I could never do something. In a case like this, though, I can honestly say I would not be able to live with myself if I left them like that. Those people were entrusted with the lives of others who are too helpless to care for themselves. To leave them to drown without making any attempt to save them is absolutely horrifying to me. In a moment of panic and cowardice, I might have done the same, but I wouldn't survive it.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Mistakes were made.

 

[scheherazade_79]

A nurse's aid tells how she and other employees lifted bed-ridden and wheelchair-bound patients through windows as the floodwaters rose, dragging some of them onto the roof and setting others afloat on mattresses. They worked until the water level inside the building made more rescues impossible. In the confusion, she says she didn't know the owners weren't part of the rescue effort until later.

I have a lot of American friends, and shout me down if you want, but I have to wonder what kind of government would leave defenceless old people and their nurses to fend for themselves in such a situation?

 

[Stella_Omega]

I have a lot of American friends, and shout me down if you want, but I have to wonder what kind of government would leave defenceless old people and their nurses to fend for themselves in such a situation?

The government we have right now, sadly- sadder than anything I ever imagined occurring in my lifetime.

 

[LadyJeanne]

I have a lot of American friends, and shout me down if you want, but I have to wonder what kind of government would leave defenceless old people and their nurses to fend for themselves in such a situation?

I'm not pinning this fiasco on the government. The people running that place should have heeded evac recommendations when they first started talking about them and should have gotten those people out - why wait until the last minute? Had they requested help from the government and been denied, then, yes, governement is responsible. But it sounds like they turned down help when it was offered from the Parish - which is a government entity.

 

[scheherazade_79]

I'm not pinning this fiasco on the government. The people running that place should have heeded evac recommendations when they first started talking about them and should have gotten those people out - why wait until the last minute? Had they requested help from the government and been denied, then, yes, governement is responsible. But it sounds like they turned down help when it was offered from the Parish - which is a government entity.

But doesn't the government have a responsibility to make sure these people are ok? I've heard stories of hospital patients being euthanised to protect them from armed looters. Fair enough - if they were too sick to be moved, they were too sick to be moved. But where was the army that's funded with everyone's tax money?