Q. How did you end up at the hospital during Katrina?

A. As the assigned physician, I was expected to be there. Normally we would have also had a team of doctors-in-training and an entire support staff. But no one else showed up that Sunday morning other than the nurses and support personnel who had been trained in disaster response.

This happened all over New Orleans. Sometimes it was the senior physician who didn’t show up, and the doctors-in-training were left to care for patients without supervisors; sometimes the senior physicians were left without the support of doctors-in-training.

Q. Why do you think the other doctors didn’t show up for work?

A. I had to ask myself at first why people who had been so passionate about patient advocacy had not bothered to show up. But with disaster preparedness, people have to evaluate their own suitability for being a first responder  and not necessarily in terms of medical or technical skills. If you have a conflict of interest that relates to what is most dear to you, you are not necessarily going to be your best self as a responder.

Some people who stayed behind were the sole caregiver for an elderly person; some had children left with a baby sitter. They broke down after four or five days. Their loved ones were lost, and that created such huge anxiety they couldn’t function. I was lucky because I knew my husband and children were safe. I think if I didn’t know where my family was, my ability to be reasonable, empathic and compassionate would have gone out the window.

Q. Did you ever fear for your own life?

A. We had heard on the news that if the levees broke, the water could be 20 feet deep and filled with toxic chemicals, so I did feel that something serious could happen. But none of us felt deeply frightened the first day. We felt safe in Charity. We had a nice team of people. And there was more patient interaction than usual.