The authorities in New Orleans have removed 45 bodies from a city hospital badly hit by flooding.
The dead were geriatric patients thought to have expired in the heat after Hurricane Katrina knocked out the hospital's power supply.
Hospital officials have given grim details of the final hours of those who died in Memorial Medical Center, which was abandoned to floodwaters more than a week ago.
Despite the desperate efforts of staff and family members to keep them cool, it is thought that many vulnerable patients simply could not cope with the stifling conditions in the damaged medical centre.
One look at the seven-foot (two metres) high water mark on the hospital walls is enough to conjure up a vision of the chaos that ensued as hundreds were trapped by rising floods.
Hospital staff had begun evacuating patients before Hurricane Katrina struck the city. But once the waters came, their job became horrendously difficult.
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They left us all to die, says nurse 
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And so preventable.... no excuse will ever suffice 
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