Five Days at Memorial

We know all about Katrina here. I live west of New Orleans and Katrina was an object lesson for us.

I didn't know all about Memorial Hospital during Katrina, however. Living on the Texas Gulf Coast obligates me to read this story and learn and share the lessons from this book.

It's a tragedy. It's a tragedy, full of both heroism and suffering. It's a well-researched tragedy, told fairly, without bias, and I was left feeling great compassion for both the medical staff of the hospital as well as the patients and rescuers.

One of the best nonfiction reads of the year.

This book is both intriguing, and extremely hard to read. It's impossible to imagine your own reactions given the conditions the staff and patients had to survive in those five days, but also impossible to think you would make some of the same choices that were made. It brings up moral and ethical issues, and made me question the power and control that are given individuals over the right to life.

This book rested comfortably on my shelf for quite some before I cycled through a long list of titles to get to it. (I'm one of those weird people who, teaching syllabi thrown at me aside, generally reads in the order I buy books.) While on that shelf, unbeknownst to me (because I am also one of those weird non-Apple people who don't keep up with Apple TV), the book was adapted to a live action series. This review is of the book alone.

First, I enjoyed the writing. Fink's style is engaging and accessible. She presents the unfolding scenario with the appropriate level of drama, but not hyperbolic drama, and I find that to be a welcome characteristic to the disaster genre. The subject matter is dramatic enough, and we can leave it at that. Put differently, Fink's background as an investigative journalist shines through, and that gives the unfolding narrative a level of street credibility.

Second, as an emergency manager, the community and family/personal preparedness lessons jump off the page. There was a striking amount of misconnection on display after invested substantial funds toward addressing that issue. It calls into question the accountability mechanisms we use for federal preparedness dollars. It also motivates (and simultaneously terrifies) me as an emergency management consultant. If anyone is interested in why people like me go on and on about participation in preparedness projects, just read this book.

Finally, readers can't help but feel the humanity here. Everyone is equal parts hero and villain. The victims here are certainly the patients, but there's a compelling argument to be made that the label “victim” applies to nearly every character.

For disaster nerds like me, reading this book is a no-brainer. For folks that want to see the apparatus that is government improve, here's the foundations of a road map (for one part of what said apparatus does). For the faint of heart, be weary, but give it a try anyway.