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In a city where hundreds of people have lost their lives, and thousands have lost their homes, the tragedy at St. Rita's seems particularly incomprehensible and acute. Few locations across the New Orleans region have accounted for more deaths. And although officials who finally recovered the bodies last week said they hoped it would help families find some closure, the reality is that the questions surrounding St. Rita's will haunt relatives and fuel investigations for years:

Why didn't the home's operators, Sal and Mable Mangano, evacuate the facility before the storm arrived, as did every other nursing home in the area? When they made a last-ditch effort to move patients as the hurricane hit, why did they take some and not others? How did they decide which to take?

On Tuesday, the state attorney general announced the arrest of the Manganos. They were charged with 34 counts of negligent homicide and booked into a Baton Rouge prison.

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But in a part of the country where hurricanes regularly threaten the coast, and fizzle more often than pummel, complacency can creep in. And for nursing homes, evacuations themselves carry risk. Also, because the homes bear the costs of transporting and providing for their patients, evacuations are a blow to small, family-run businesses like St. Rita's.

As a result, officials said, many nursing homes and other medical facilities often are reluctant to move their patients until it becomes clear that a storm is going to be severe. What puzzles--and angers--some officials about St. Rita's is that it was clear relatively early that Hurricane Katrina would land with substantial force.

Ingargiola said anyone watching TV would have known the storm was coming. He raised a common suspicion about the Manganos' thinking.

"I've known them all my life. They're nice people," he said. "But when you make a decision over life and money, you've got a problem. They wanted to take a chance and they took a chance on the wrong storm."

As Katrina approached, officials in St. Bernard said they made numerous calls or visits to the area's nursing homes, including St. Rita's.

Dr. Bryan Bertucci, the parish coroner, said he had at least three conversations with the Manganos in the days before the storm.

In his final conversation, two days before the storm hit, he said they informed him they were staying put.

"I called Mabel at 2 p.m., told her we had two buses and two drivers," Bertucci said. "Her response was, `I have five nurses, a generator, I've spoken to families, and they say it's OK.'"

Asked why he didn't force them to go, Bertucci said, "Our job is to advise people what to do, but they have to make their own decisions. In this instance, the decision made was poor."

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"Her response was, `I have five nurses, a generator, I've spoken to families, and they say it's OK.'"

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