'Total strength': A Katrina nurse reflects on saving babies 20 years later

NEW ORLEANS —

In the chaos after the levees failed in 2005, Charlotte Parent, vice president of business development at University Medical Center, was a nurse.

She shared her inspirational and emotional story with WDSU’s Aubry Killion. Advertisement

Parent and her team at Touro improvised rooftop triage, helicopter evacuations and family convoys.

Two decades later, she says the lesson is simple: Keep pushing.

As Hurricane Katrina’s winds pummeled New Orleans and floodwater swallowed neighborhoods, hundreds of nurses became the city’s lifelines.

Among them was Parent, then a nurse and director of maternal services at Touro in the Garden District.

Asked to sum up what it took to endure those days, she doesn’t hesitate: “Total strength.”

“We ended up on the roof of one of our buildin