On Sunday, The New York Times published a disturbing investigation into the story behind a recommendation by city officials that "thousands of elderly, disabled and mentally ill residents remain in more than 40 nursing homes and adult homes in flood-prone areas of New York City" in the days and hours before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy. The decision, the Times reports, had "calamitous consequences." (The story appears today, Dec. 3, in the print edition.)
The story's authors, Jennifer Preston, Sheri Fink, and Michael Powell, report that "it took at least three days for the Fire Department, the National Guard and ambulance crews from around the country to rescue over 4,000 nursing home and 1,500 adult home residents. Without working elevators, many had to be carried down slippery stairwells."
Once they were evacuated, "many sat for hours in ambulances and buses before being transported to safety through sand drifts and debris-filled floodwaters. They went to crowded shelters and nursing homes as far away as Albany, where for days, they often lacked medical charts and medications. Families struggled to locate relatives," the reporters write.
The investigation by the Times provides a good reminder of how important it is for reporters and their news organizations to stay on a story weeks or months after it has dropped from the headlines. (Fink won a Pulitzer Prize for doing the same thing in 2009–staying with the tragic story of what happened inside a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina.)
Beyond that, the reporters did an admirable job of putting the story together. The writing is restrained; the reporters resisted what must have been the temptation to wring every ounce of pathos from this tragic occurrence. As a result, the story speaks for itself. And it is devastating.
-Paul Raeburn
[Disclosure: Sheri Fink and I are colleagues in a writers' group in New York City.]
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