“We are going to do a full investigation into whether the owner of the facilities failed to keep residents safe… and if warranted we will take aggressive legal action against any responsible parties.”
That is what Governor John Bel Edwards said about four nursing home patients who died after they were evacuated to a facility in Tangipahoa to shelter during Hurricane Ida.
Over 800 residents from seven nursing homes in Orleans, Lafourche, Terrebonne and Jefferson parishes were evacuated to shelter at the facility, where conditions quickly deteriorated as Ida swept across Louisiana.
Governor Edwards says when conditions deteriorated; the owner of the nursing homes did not move the nursing home residents to a better facility nor asked the state help to relocate the residents.
An investigation is underway, which the governor says he believes will be a joint investigation by both state and federal agencies.
Edwards says he feels the nursing home caretakers did all they could to care for the residents under such deplorable conditions.
“The fact that it wasn’t possible to do better by them indicated that they really should not have stayed in that place as long as they were,” said Edwards.
