Five Days at Memorial

How little it takes for our advanced Western society to sink to the depths where paranoia, misinformation, anarchy, panic and baser instincts begin to triumph step by step through lack of information, accountability and resources. How little it takes to make concepts like ethics, morality, humanity meaningless. It is hard to criticise anyone, to find fault (although that is what this is all about), but wrong decisions made in good faith can lead to disastrous consequences. We are used to seeing this in (zombie) apocalyptic science fiction, not in a less than two-decade-old event from an institution "on the cusp of human progress". The reconstruction of the events of a few days after Katrina on the grounds of a hospital where everything that could go wrong did, with very tragic consequences, and the ensuing hunt for the culprit through procedural investigation and judicial finger-pointing. The best disaster thing since Chernobyl, with which it shares some of the same DNA. Chilling, compelling, revealing. The only problems are the length (it would have been better to cut across the episodes to make it one episode shorter overall), the hospital/court break (both passages are excellent, but for me it's better to mix them than half this and half that), and the unsuitable melodrama of the second episode, it may serve as a "calm before the storm" (or after the storm), but it doesn't fit the otherwise raw concept one bit. (01/11/2023)

This series covers a distinctly American topic, though the sheer force of the hurricane battering the hospital reminded me of the storms that sometimes hit our own home. What transpired there and the aftermath left me stunned. Sure, it makes sense that a hurricane would hit an area known for hurricanes. And yes, it might be unprecedented in its force. But the fact that a levee breaks and floods the hospital due to poor design — that's a whole different level of disaster. You wouldn't expect that in such a crisis, everyone from the military to firefighters to the government would abandon you, yet that's exactly what happened. It’s a short step from there to the Memorial Hospital becoming a hell on Earth — without electricity, clean water, food, or any humanitarian aid, losing the last vestiges of what we call humanity. The series compellingly depicts how healthcare workers struggled to help everyone, but it raises the question: in those circumstances, what does "help" really mean? (04/05/2023)