Puerto Rico death toll hits 1,427
Official count from Maria stayed at 64 for months
Puerto Rico’s government acknowledged Thursday that the death toll from Hurricane Maria may have risen to more than 1,400 – an estimate many times higher than the official count it’s clung to for months.
In a draft report to Congress posted online, the government claimed the revised number of deaths should be 1,427, based on public health records. It also claimed 527,000 homeowners reported damage to their homes and about 40 schools were permanently closed because of storm damage.
“Although the official death count from the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety was initially 64, the toll appears to be much higher,” the report said.
The 411-page document, titled “Transformation and Innovation in the Wake of Devastation: An Economic and Disaster Recovery Plan for Puerto Rico,” laid out plans the government hopes to implement post-Maria and estimated it will need about $125 billion over the next decade to rebuild. So far, around $35 billion in federal disaster recovery funds has been allocated.
The increase in fatalities is significant because it places Maria in the category of historic deadly hurricanes, such as Katrina, which claimed 1,800 lives after slamming into the Gulf Coast in 2005, said George Haddow, a senior fellow at Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy and a former senior Federal Emergency Management Agency official in the Clinton administration.
The higher death count is also key to rebuilding Puerto Rico to sustain new massive storms, he said.
“The number of people who died and how they died should play a role in how they rebuild and how they enact hazard mitigation risk-reduction measures so a similar death toll doesn’t occur next time a similar hurricane hits the island,” Haddow said.
The government has been criticized for underplaying the number of deaths from the Category 4 storm, which cut through the middle of the island on Sept. 20, causing widespread destruction and a monthslong blackout.