US: When rescue workers entered the Memorial Medical Centre they found bodies everywhere - on the floor, on stretchers and up on the roof waiting to be picked up by helicopters.
Some had died before the hurricane hit New Orleans but others - there were 45 in all - were too old or too ill to survive after the power failed and the city was cut off.
Hundreds of staff tried to keep the hospital's 2,000 patients alive, fanning them with paper or pieces of cardboard and giving oxygen manually for hours at a time. Some patients were rescued by helicopter or in small boats during the days that followed the hurricane, but help did not come quickly enough for the most seriously ill.
The bodies were found at the Memorial Medical Centre just as the mood in New Orleans was starting to improve and recovery teams were reporting fewer dead in the city than expected. Although the hospital deaths were a tragedy that might have been avoided if help had come sooner, the patients were not abandoned but received the best available care during their last hours.
At St Rita's nursing home in St Bernard's Parish, 34 people died, some in their beds and others in wheelchairs, waiting to be evacuated. The authorities are considering whether to hold a criminal investigation into why more than half of the home's elderly residents were trapped inside after St Rita's owners and staff escaped by boat.
The home's owners had refused offers of help to evacuate from the parish authorities and told relatives not to come to St Rita's to help.
Nobody knows exactly what went wrong at St Rita's or how much blame should fall on the couple who ran the home, but the incident has become a focus for anger at the way the strong escaped New Orleans while the weak remained trapped inside.
Mayor Ray Nagin has condemned the decision by police in Gretna, a comfortable suburb, to turn back hundreds of hungry, desperate people who tried to cross a bridge near the Convention Centre. Gretna police said they were protecting property from possible looters, adding that they had no provisions or resources to help those trying to get out of the city.
Some American sociologists this week cast doubt on reports of widespread violence and looting in New Orleans, pointing out that violence is unusual in the aftermath of natural disasters. Kathleen Tierney, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told the Boston Globe that there was no evidence for many of the more lurid stories of violence reported from New Orleans.
Hard evidence of rape and murder inside the Convention Centre and the Superdome is indeed elusive, and some police officers have told me emphatically that no such incidents occurred. Looting was undoubtedly widespread, but much of it was motivated by desperation and some was even altruistic.
At 40, Michael had never imagined becoming a looter, but when his home in the mid-city district became flooded, he joined some of his neighbours in raiding a local supermarket.
"We got food for ourselves and for older people who couldn't get out, Pampers for mothers, that kind of thing," he said.
Michael eventually swam to the French Quarter, where he stayed until he went to Ohio last weekend. He told me that about 150 looters in mid-city were divided into factions, one of which he led.
"We were the Common Sense faction, about 30 of us. Helicopters were flying over us all the time, and the other factions wanted to set fire to cars to attract their attention. I thought the helicopters had probably seen us and were picking up more urgent cases first. Burning cars could just put them off," he said.
Despite his impatience with the other factions, Michael claimed looters shared a sense of community and took responsibility for their weaker neighbours.
Like everyone else in New Orleans, he has been badly shaken by the disaster and he now has no home, no job and no money. But he believes he will look back on the last two weeks with the kind of nostalgia soldiers feel for the wars of their youth.
When he swam away, Michael took with him a small Dictaphone on which he had recorded a documentary about the American Civil War. He told me that, like the people of New Orleans, soldiers after the Civil War found themselves scattered across the country.
He played me a passage about re-enacting Civil War battles from the recollections of Berry Benson, a Confederate soldier, which he has played over and over during the past few days:
"And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say: Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?"