Puerto Rican Government Acknowledges Hurricane Death Toll of 1,427

Puerto Rican Government Acknowledges Hurricane Death Toll of 1,427

Hundreds of pairs of shoes in San Juan, P.R., paid tribute to the victims of Hurricane Maria. The storm’s official death toll of 64 has not yet been changed.

Credit
Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times

By Frances Robles

Aug. 9, 2018

SAN JUAN, P.R. — The government of Puerto Rico quietly acknowledged in a report posted online that in all likelihood more than 1,400 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria — a figure that is more than 20 times the official death toll.
Hurricane Maria cut through the island on Sept. 20, knocking out power and initially killing about a dozen people. The government’s official count eventually grew to 64, as more people died from suicide, bacterial diseases, lack of access to health care and other factors. The number has not changed despite several academic assessments concluding that death certificates did not come close to tallying the storm’s fatal toll.
But in a draft of a report to Congress requesting $139 billion in recovery funds, the Puerto Rican government admitted that 1,427 more people died in the last four months of 2017 compared with the same time frame in the previous four years. The figures came from death registry statistics that were released in June, but which were never publicly acknowledged by officials on the island.
The increase was enormous, particularly considering that Puerto Rico’s population has declined considerably in the past few years.


“Although the official death count from the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety was initially 64, the toll appears to be much higher,” said the report, titled “Transformation and Innovation in the Wake of Devastation.”
In another section, it said: “According to initial reports, 64 lives were lost. That estimate was later revised to 1,427.”

The 400-page report was posted online in July and sat largely unnoticed for weeks. When The New York Times posted an article about it on Thursday, the government quickly pushed back on the information contained in its own report.
“That number was not the result of an independent study — it is simple math,” Héctor Pesquera, the secretary of public safety, said in a statement. “This is not the official number of deaths attributable to Hurricane Maria.”
Mr. Pesquera said the government was anticipating the official results from a study by George Washington University in the coming weeks. “Once the study is released, the government of Puerto Rico will update the official number,” he said. “We owe it to the people of Puerto Rico to have a precise number, along with the data we need to make better preparations for future disaster situations.”

He blamed standard disaster protocol from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the low estimate of deaths.


Official Toll in Puerto Rico: 64. Actual Deaths May Be 1,052.
Officially, 64 people died because of the storm, but an analysis by The New York Times suggests that the actual number is substantially higher.
Dec. 8, 2017
The government, and Mr. Pesquera in particular, was widely criticized for undercounting the number of people who died on the island as the power outage stretched for months, causing deaths from diabetes and sepsis to soar. Many people died from lack of access to hospitals, or because there was no power to run the machines they used to breathe.
Even in the face of mounting evidence from funeral directors around the island, Mr. Pesquera had insisted that unless doctors certified on a patient’s death certificate that the storm contributed to the person’s death, the person would not be counted.
After a New York Times analysis in December showed that even the preliminary data from the Demographic Registry of Puerto Rico indicated that deaths had risen by 1,052, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló hired George Washington University’s school of public health on a $305,000 contract to conduct an analysis. The report, now three months overdue, is expected to be released at the end of the month.
“We definitely acknowledge this is a realistic estimate,” Pedro Cerame, a spokesman for the Puerto Rican government’s Federal Affairs Administration, said of the numbers in the report to Congress. “We don’t want to say it out loud or publicize it as an official number. The official number will come, and it could be close.”
The final version of the report, released Thursday, hedged the language to say that the additional deaths “may or may not be attributable” to the storm; the 1,427 figure was also deleted from a chart

“I want to emphasize, though, that we have always expected the number to be higher,” Mr. Cerame said in an email. “The estimate provided was done using data from the Demographic Registry, which was made available to the members of the media.”
A much-publicized study from Harvard University showed the deaths could have ranged from 800 to 8,500. Alexis R. Santos, a demographer at Pennsylvania State University, concluded that between 1,006 and 1,272 died.
The mounting evidence compiled by researchers and investigative reporters “should have prompted a quicker response,” Professor Santos said.
“The report requested by the government will be published one month before the first anniversary of Hurricane Maria,” he said. “That is certainly not a quick response.”
The final version of the recovery plan being submitted to Congress outlines ambitious projects for Puerto Rico that include major highway renovations, $15 billion for the Department of Education and $26 billion for the energy grid. The government has asked for $6 billion for repair and replacement of public buildings and $3.9 billion for environmental use, according to an announcement from the governor’s office.
“Puerto Rico has a unique opportunity to innovate and rebuild the Puerto Rico that we all want,” Governor Rosselló said in a statement.


A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 10, 2018, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Hurricane Killed 1,427, Not 64, Puerto Rico Admits in Funding Request. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe