During Hurricane Laura, numerous senior citizens were left abandoned. CrowdSource Rescue and other volunteer groups helped rescue them.
How was this allowed to happen in the first place?
We are calling for a full investigation into the responsible parties. We need your help to make sure that happens.
We've created this page to discuss some of the facts as we know them and recommend various action-steps.
Disabled senior citizens at the HUD public-housing facility "Golden Arms" in Lake Charles were abandoned after Hurricane Laura.
According to residents, an evacuation bus was sent after the storm, but they were ordered off it. And then, emergency services, just... forgot about them.
When found by volunteer rescuers, they were overheating and in dirty diapers. They were left without food, water, or electricity.
CrowdSource Rescue volunteers arrived on scene, where they administered relief and medical aid, while also making numerous calls to authorities about the situation, trying to escalate it.
After much pestering, emergency services arrived on scene, and then... left, with vague promises of an evacuation that never appeared.
Eventually CrowdSource Rescue and Aerobridge evacuated the seniors themselves, so they could get the medical help they desperately needed.
This is a catastrophic failure on account of multiple agencies and systems. These seniors deserved better than this.
Aside from the obvious humanitarian concerns, this was a top-to-bottom failure of emergency services, for our most vulnerable residents.
Multiple agencies, including Acadia Health, Lake Charles Fire, and FEMA USAR teams were on site and did nothing, claiming it was not their jurisidiction. No evacuations, no action taken on an obviously severe situation.
Worse, this entire saga happened across the street from the National Guard base (where President Trump spoke) and the residents couldn't even be provided a port-a-potty, let alone an evacuation to a medical facility.
GOHSEP in particular deserves anger. They forgot about these residents, then they said they were already rescued (they weren't), then they forgot about them again.
Claiming ignorance is one thing - we get it, disasters are chaos.
But that's not the case here: they knew and did nothing.
Someone has completely screwed the pooch. Seniors were left to die.
And you should be furious. We sure are.
How could the ball be dropped this badly? How could so many be so callous?
We are calling for full-throated investigations in to why such a travesty occured.
And this is just one example! There were multiple abandoned facilities in the Lake Charles area!
This needs to never happen again. There needs to be investigations, possibly even criminal prosecutions as a result of this.