Maria joins ranks of Katrina as Puerto Rico revises toll
More than 1,400 islanders died in last year’s storm
The Puerto Rican government acknowledged Thursday that the death toll from Hurricane Maria was more than 1,400 – an estimate many times higher than the official count it has clung to for months.
In a draft report to Congress posted online, the government said the death toll is 1,427, based on public health records. It said 527,000 homeowners reported damage to their homes and about 40 schools permanently closed because of structural damage.
“Although the official death count from the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety was initially 64, the toll appears to be much higher,” it 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 the government’s recovery plans and estimated it will need about $125 billion over the next decade to rebuild. About $35 billion in federal disaster recovery money has been allocated for Puerto Rico.
The new estimate 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 senior official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the Clinton administration.
The higher death count is key to rebuilding Puerto Rico to stand against powerful storms, he said.
“The number of people who died and how they died should play a role in how they rebuild,” Haddow said.
The Puerto Rican government was criticized for underplaying the number of deaths from the Category 4 storm, which hit the island Sept. 20, 2017, causing widespread destruction and a months-long blackout.
A New York Times analysis of island records estimated the death toll at about 1,052. In May, a Harvard University study estimated that 800 to 8,500 people died because of Maria.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello acknowledged that the official count of 64 probably was low but hesitated to confirm a higher count until further study. The government commissioned George Washington University to conduct a more thorough study, due for release this month.
Besides those killed in the storm, scores died when they weren’t able to access hospitals over impassable roads, couldn’t plug in dialysis machines when the island went dark or couldn’t cope with the stress after the storm.
The low official death count sparked protests in San Juan. This year, Puerto Ricans laid thousands of pairs of shoes outside the island’s Capitol building to represent the uncounted dead.
How to classify hurricane-related deaths has been debated since the storm struck 10 months ago. Two bills were introduced in Congress in June in an attempt to establish a standard for counting deaths after a natural disaster.