Some 4,645 died after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico- Harvard report
Devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last September saw 4,645 people die, despite the official government death toll standing at just 64.
The shocking news about the storm, which also caused $90 billion in damage, was revealed in a new Harvard study released today.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, it found that in the weeks following the storm, there was severe disruption to health-care for the elderly and basic utility services for the chronically ill - leading to more deaths.
However, as of December 29, the Department of Public Safety had certified just 64 deaths from the hurricane.
The study saw researchers interview thousands of households in Puerto Rico as authorities admit they have struggled to accurately measure the death count because of the devastation.
The authors, made up of researchers in the United States and Puerto Rico, wrote: 'Our results indicate that the official death count of 64 is a substantial underestimate of the true burden of mortality after Hurricane Maria.'
A report in October revealed that the Puerto Rican government was permitting funeral homes and crematoriums to burn the bodies of people who they say died as a result of Hurricane Maria — but those people were not counted in the death toll.
The directors say in many cases they don't know how to classify hurricane-related deaths, or whether they should send bodies to the central institute certifying official hurricane deaths, the Institute of Forensic Sciences.
The ferocious storm tore through the country last year, leaving homes destroyed and roads flooded.
The country was thrown into chaos with the electrical grid being wiped out and entire communities cut off for weeks.
Officials in Puerto Rico described conditions there as 'apocalyptic' in the wake of Hurricane Maria, with widespread destruction and looting and electricity and cell phone service cut off for much of the island.
Puerto Rico's nonvoting representative in the US Congress said that Hurricane Maria's destruction set the island back decades.
'The devastation in Puerto Rico has set us back nearly 20 to 30 years,' said Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez.
'I can't deny that the Puerto Rico of now is different from that of a week ago. The destruction of properties, of flattened structures, of families without homes, of debris everywhere. The island's greenery is gone."
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2 Responses to “Some 4,645 died after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico- Harvard report”
and the tornadoes within it. the figures made public are way under what it really was. ask any one who was in
it, yourself, your neighbors, me on tortola how intense being in the middle of the tornadoes was. wind speed of
185 mph max? ha ha ha, try 350 and up mph. us gov playing down lots of stuff as did the media. totally
abnormal phenomena within a serious event. like storms on jupiter.