At Nursing Home, Katrina Dealt Only the First Blow

Lafon had 130 patients in 81 rooms on the first floor. Some of the residents could walk to the dining room for meals. In the wing where bedridden patients lived, their photographs were hung on a bulletin board with little stickers that said "You are my sunshine." Upstairs, several nuns who worked at Lafon had small bedrooms and living quarters.

Lafon clearly envisioned the possibility of an evacuation. A state health department form filed in June asked the nursing home, "If an evacuation was called for your parish," where would patients be taken? McDaniel listed two addresses outside New Orleans, in St. Benedict and Franklinton, La.

To ride out the hurricane, McDaniel had a staff of about 22, including five or six nuns. It would be fortuitous that the group included men.

On the weekend of Aug. 27-28, as the hurricane approached, Berita Leonard stopped by to visit her 85-year-old father, Victor Nelson Sr., a retired furniture upholsterer who was staying at Lafon -- Room 239 -- while he recovered from hip surgery. He was 6-foot-1 and wore a wooden cross on a string around his neck. He wore a little black cap that he took off when his daughter came for her daily visits so she could comb his hair.

Leonard told her dad that she was evacuating to Houston. She assumed Lafon would be evacuating -- she'd signed a form authorizing the nursing home to move her father in case of emergency -- but when she ran into McDaniel in the hallway, Leonard said the nun suggested she bring her dad to Houston with her. Leonard thought to herself, "He's 85 years old with a broken hip; where in the world am I going to take him on the highway?" She decided he should stay.

Before leaving that night, Leonard dashed in to check on one of her favorite patients, Sister DeSalle, a nun Leonard knew from her Catholic school days. Leonard was surprised to hear Sister DeSalle say that she and the other sisters who were patients were being evacuated.

The next morning, a Sunday, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation for the city. Judith Heikes called from Illinois and was told that Lafon was hunkering down, with plenty of staff. Karen Cullins called from Baton Rouge and was told the same. A few people drove to Lafon to pick up their elderly relatives.

The staff prepared for the night shift. McDaniel had stocked her "hurricane closet" with medicine, flashlights, batteries, diapers and extra supplies. A generator was at the ready, and an abundance of food and water. Some employees brought their family members with them to Lafon that night. A dietitian, Dora Spencer, brought her two children. Beverly Greenwood, a social worker training to be a nursing home administrator, brought her mother, her stepfather and her 91-year-old grandmother.

Evelyn Leal was also bedding down at Lafon. A seventh-generation New Orleanian, Leal had not wanted to evacuate her home in the Gentilly neighborhood near Dillard University -- she had her little dog, Samson, there -- but her daughter had wrung a compromise from her: Go stay with Dad at the nursing home. Jules Leal was in Room 236A at Lafon, and that is where Evelyn Leal, 85, settled into a chair next to her husband's bed.

It was still dark out the next morning when Leal was awakened by voices. "It's beginning to flood," she heard someone say. Leal put her feet down; she was ankle-deep in water.

A Rush of Water

Outside the wind was growing in force and fury. Greenwood was in the kitchen helping the dietary staff prepare a breakfast of scrambled eggs and grits when someone said, "Oh, my God, water's coming into the kitchen."

Even in the descending desperation of that dawn, the orderliness McDaniel had instilled in her staff was reflected in a logbook at the front desk.