New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) vowed accountability “across the board” after five people were found dead in senior apartment complexes after Hurricane Ida.
Cantrell made the comment in a news conference on Monday, a day after the city disclosed the deaths after evacuating eight facilities.
The deaths are under investigation by the state coroner’s office.
“What we found was unacceptable and accountability will be across the board,” Cantrell said.
“But right now we will remain focused on improving the conditions in the facilities that we closed in order to bring our seniors back. We do not want to bring them back in those conditions that they left,” she continued.
In a statement on Sunday, the city of New Orleans said it evacuated the facilities the previous day, after post-Hurricane Ida wellness checks revealed that the complexes were unsafe to live in.
The city said the majority of the residents were transferred to general population shelters and some were transferred to area hospitals.
Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29. The Louisiana Department of Health said on Twitter Sunday that the death toll from the storm in the state is at 13.
The state announced Saturday that it ordered the immediate closure of a separate set of seven nursing home facilities that had evacuated residents to a single warehouse before Ida made landfall. Seven deaths of nursing home residents have been linked to the warehouse, five of which are classified as storm-related.
The state’s health department said at the time that inspectors were prevented from conducting an inspection of the warehouse after hearing of the conditions there. The owner of the nursing homes is also accused of intimidating officials from the agency.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) launched an investigation into the warehouse last Friday.