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After city power failed, Memorial ran on generators that failed as floodwater rose. 45 bodies were later recovered from the hospital.
TierCity power failed on 29 August and the backup generators failed early on 31 August, while evacuation was still incomplete. How tiers are assigned.
About 2,000 people sheltered at Memorial, including more than 200 patients; a separate long-term acute care hospital, LifeCare, had 52 patients on the seventh floor, many on ventilators. City power failed early on Monday 29 August. Staff had warned before the storm that the electrical system was vulnerable to flooding. The backup generators failed on Wednesday 31 August (early that day in Sheri Fink's account, around midday in a 2006 Urban Institute study), leaving the hospital without power while evacuation was still incomplete. Sheri Fink's reporting documents the triage and end-of-life decisions made in that heat and darkness. Mortuary workers removed 45 bodies from Memorial.[1,2,3]
45 bodies recovered from the hospital (Fink/ProPublica; the Urban Institute study also reports 45, and notes that Memorial's owner Tenet said 11 of the patients had died before the storm). How many deaths the power loss caused is not established in the sources reviewed.
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