Disgrace in deadliest disaster
When Hurricane Maria pounded through Puerto Rico last September, it devastated the island’s infrastructure. Hospitals, homes, electric lines, and communications systems were wiped out, with Gov. Ricardo Rosselló estimating damages at $90 billion.
So when the official death toll of 64 people came in — and never changed, despite a shamefully feeble disaster response from the Trump administration — many experts were suspicious.
Now we know the actual death toll from Hurricane Maria was probably much, much worse. According to a new Harvard University study out this week, 4,645 people are dead as a result of the hurricane and its aftermath.
That’s more than twice the number of Americans who died in Hurricane Katrina.
If the study is correct, it means Hurricane Maria is the most deadly natural disaster
in modern U.S. history.
It’s hard to overstate the abysmal moral failure contained in that revised number.
The study indicates that a significant number of the deaths can be attributed to disruptions in health care and the long loss of basic services that shortened the lives of elderly and chronically ill people. The problems included a shortage of medicine, inadequate medical staff and facilities, and a lack of electricity to run critical machinery like ventilators.
In other words, many of the dead didn’t have to die. Given an adequate disaster response, their deaths could have been avoided.
The abject failure of the Trump administration to appropriately respond to the desperate situation of 3.5 million Americans is only one part of this story.
The other part of the story is the official failure to collect better data on the disaster.
Without knowing how many people died — and how they died — it’s difficult for officials to plan for future disaster responses.
The Puerto Rican government has said it is still trying to verify the death toll, and it’s working with outside researchers to do so. Clearly, the Puerto Rican government bears some responsibility for the dramatic undercount. It needs to improve its protocols for judging and certifying hurricane-related deaths.
Yet ultimately what the death toll represents is a political decision to ignore the island’s desperation. That failure lies squarely with Washington.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and the federal government should have offered them the same urgent response as it would any citizen in the event of disaster. The fact that the Trump administration neglected them, with such deadly results, should outrage every American.