Victim's plea for help not heard

From correspondents in New Orleans
September 05, 2005

A LOCAL church official has hit out at official failure to help all the neediest victims of Hurricane Katrina, telling the tragic story of a colleague's mother who died in a nursing home.

DAY after day, the aged woman clung to life in her submerged nursing home. Day after day, her son called to say help was on the way. But rescue never came. Only a watery death.
Aaron Broussard, president of the Jefferson Parish section of New Orleans, could not hold back tears, as he told NBC television of the agonizing death of a colleague's elderly mother in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?"'

"He said, 'Yeah, mama, somebody is coming to get you. Somebody is coming to get you.

Broussard told of repeated calls from the elderly woman to her son, until finally she drowned in the nursing home before help could come.

"She drowned Friday night!" Broussard cried. "She drowned Friday night!"

Broussard quivered with rage as he gave voice to the frustration felt by much of the battered southern city at the slow pace of rescue operations after the hurricane struck a week ago.

"Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody is coming to get her," he said.

"Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences.

"For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody