Five Days at Memorial

You might binge watch this, but the story is very intense and you really need a break after an episode. I watched the first two together and the others separately. My comments are only on these first four. The acting is excellent. The Direction is excellent. The story is heartbreaking. Local authority is unprepared and non existent. The lack of local, state and federal assistance is criminal. A hard lesson that hopefully improved every hospital emergency plan as well as individual, family, corporate, local, state and federal emergency plans dealing with any disaster. You feel drained after watching each of the first four episodes.

First off, Cherry and Vera are fantastic in this. After the pandemic, watching this story gives me chills. Such a good story to be told. Highly recommend.

I'm from New Orleans, was born in that hospital, when it was Baptist. My grandfather died there and I know a guy who worked there. The film was perfect, in terms of acting, everything. I did find one probable flaw that made me give it a 9/10. Emmett Everette had oxygen tubes to his nostrils the whole time. Those are usually hooked to an electrical device that pumps in supplemental oxygen. But there was no electricity. Could have been bottled oxygen, but the supply room was under water. And nobody keeps those tubes in tf he or she isn't getting oxygen. A small flaw, so I'd say 9.9/10. One last thing: That "Butch" character, if real, should be made to live on the LA coastline with no evacuation allowed. Then he might learn how hurricanes can mess with your mind.

The first 5 episodes are dedicated to the actual events at the hospital and those ones are great. First episode is intense; the rest are a bit slower in nature but are a very interesting watch. It's great to see how everything went down when the hurricane hit.

The last 3 episodes are dedicated to the aftermath of everything, from the hospital to the decisions made at the hospital. These are not bad necessarily, but they move at a sluggish pace and are ultimately not even half as interesting as the hospital episodes.

I really feel like they could have shortened the first 5 hospital episodes into 4, and the last 3 aftermath episodes into 2 for a total of 6 thought out episodes. It really starts to repeat itself at those points, but it is still a fine watch, especially if you are particularly interested in hurricane Katrina.

I didn't fully comprehend the human suffering or issues at hand back in 2005, in part to being in my early 20s and also slightly jaded from being in the military-where we always help and leaving people is unfathomable. Watching this show, well... I've had to watch in bite size pieces. It literally nauseates me and gives me such anxiety.

The despair. The decisions being made. The decisions being made because of the despair. It was a no win situation. I can't imagine having to decide between my life, another's life, whether leaving them behind is the answer, or helping them go quicker to ease pain and suffering. It really puts the Hippocratic oath to test-first do no harm, right? Very subjective. If the harm is that the patient will be left behind to die, then helping to end that suffering is the right choice, right? But they could survive, we don't know if more help will come tomorrow once we evacuate, right? Is there a right? Is there a wrong? The only wrong during the aftermath of Katrina, was doing nothing. And we saw a whole lot of that, as we see here in this docuseries.

I can't imagine. I just can't.

The loss of the pets; first, I don't comprehend how there were pets in a hospital in the first place. All I know? If it came to leaving my best friend (4 legs) to fend for herself, putting her down, or staying with her to surely die myself... I know which I'd chose-the one I could live with, no matter how short that would make my own life.

I'm so sorry to those who lost loved ones, who had to witness such despair, or make such gut wrenching decisions. Perseverance isn't for the faint of heart.

This show, sucks.