Revised post-Maria death toll exceeds estimates

Nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico

Nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico in the chaotic, grueling aftermath of Hurricane Maria, a toll that far exceeds the original estimates, according to a new study.

From September 2017 to February 2018, 2,975 people died, according to the study by George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, which was commissioned by the Puerto Rican government.

That total is a dramatic increase from the long-held count of 64, which the administration of Gov. Ricardo Rossello left unchanged in the 11 months since the storm. Tuesday, Rossello said the study’s estimate, for now, would become the official death toll from Maria – making the storm the second-deadliest in U.S. history, trailing only the Galveston, Texas, hurricane that killed more than 6,000 people in 1900.

“It is painful,” Rossello said at a news conference. “It’s a continuing realization that a lot of people lost their lives, a continuing realization that a lot of people are going through hardships.”

He said he ordered the creation of a commission to study how to implement the report’s recommendations.

The GWU researchers will look at specific cases to determine what causes of deaths were most prevalent in the storm’s aftermath, he said.

The study found doctors on the island were ill-equipped to properly classify deaths after a natural disaster and the government failed to prepare them before the 2017 season.

It found that government emergency plans in place when Maria hit were not designed for hurricanes greater than a Category 1. Maria was a Category 4 with 154-mph winds. Damage was estimated at more than $100 billion.

“The inadequate preparedness and personnel training for crisis and emergency risk communication, combined with numerous barriers to accurate, timely information and factors that increased rumor generation, ultimately decreased the perceived transparency and credibility of the Government of Puerto Rico,” the report said.

The official death toll from Maria has been a point of contention since the storm ripped through the middle of

the island Sept. 20, destroying homes and island infrastructure, displacing thousands and plunging the island into a blackout for months.

Maria did not discriminate. People from all social and economic backgrounds perished, but the death count was proportionately higher among the poor and elderly, the report says.

The latest study, commissioned by the Puerto Rican government, puts the tragedy of Hurricane Maria on the same scale as the September 11th attacks,” Rep. Bennie Thompson D-Miss., ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. “Because FEMA and the federal government were simply unprepared, thousands of our fellow ... citizens have perished – and we now know that the poor and elderly were the most at risk.”

Besides those directly killed by the storm, scores died when they weren’t able to access hospitals , couldn’t plug in dialysis machines when the island went dark or couldn’t cope with the stress.

The low official death count sparked protests in San Juan and hindered the island’s recovery would PR have received more funding if the official death toll was higher?. This year, Puerto Ricans laid thousands of pairs of shoes outside the island’s Capitol building to represent the uncounted dead.

Some media and academic studies estimated the death toll at more than 1,000, and a government report to Congress conceded that there may have been 1,400 more deaths in Puerto Rico after the storm than the previous year.

The Center for Investigative Journalism, Puerto Rico, in a joint project with CNN, is analyzing thousands of postMaria death certificates to try to determine an accurate death count.

The GWU study would put Maria as the second-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history. The hurricane of 1900 in Galveston, Texas, killed 6,000 to 12,000, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,800 along the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Researchers counted deaths from Maria over six months because so many people were without power, which probably led to more deaths.