Hurricane's toll raised to 2,975

Number is almost twice the previous estimate of deaths in last year's tragedy

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Puerto Rico's governor raised the US territory's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to nearly 3,000 on Tuesday after an independent study found that the number of people who succumbed in the desperate, sweltering aftermath had been severely undercounted.

The report found that an estimated 2,975 deaths could be attributed directly or indirectly to Maria from the time it struck in September 2017 to mid-February of this year.

The finding is almost twice the government's previous estimate, included in a recent report to Congress, that there were 1,427 more deaths than normal in the three months after the storm.

The latest Puerto Rico figure was derived from comparisons between predicted mortality under normal circumstances and deaths documented after the storm, a number that turned out to be 22 percent higher.

Researchers said they adjusted for various factors that could account for fluctuations in mortality, most notably the displacement of about 241,000 residents who fled the island in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

They also found that the poor and elderly were disproportionately hard hit in terms of risk of fatalities.

The emergency response to Maria became highly politicized as the Trump administration was castigated as being slow to recognize the gravity of the devastation and too sluggish in providing disaster relief to Puerto Rico, an island of more than 3 million residents.

'Anticipate the worst'

The new estimate of nearly 3,000 dead in the six months after Maria devastated the island in September 2017 and knocked out the entire electrical grid was made by researchers with the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

"We never anticipated a scenario of zero communication, zero energy, zero highway access," Governor Ricardo Rossello told reporters. "I think the lesson is to anticipate the worst. ... Yes, I made mistakes. Yes, in hindsight, things could've been handled differently."

He said he is creating a commission to study the hurricane response, and a registry of people vulnerable to the next hurricane, such as the elderly, the bedridden and kidney dialysis patients.

Rossello acknowledged Puerto Rico remains vulnerable to another major storm. He said the government has improved its communication systems and established a network to distribute food and medicine, but he noted that there are still 60,000 homes without a proper roof and that the power grid is still unstable.

"A lesson from this is that efforts for assistance and recovery need to focus as much as possible on lower-income areas, on people who are older, who are more vulnerable," said Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken institute.

The White House issued a statement on Tuesday noting that it sent 12,000 personnel to Puerto Rico for response and recovery efforts, and said it would continue to support the island's government and its communities in their recovery for years to come.

Yet many remain outraged at both the local and federal governments.

Representative Nydia Velazquez, a New York Democrat, said the report shows the US government failed the people of Puerto Rico.

"These numbers are only the latest to underscore that the federal response to the hurricanes was disastrously inadequate and, as a result, thousands of our fellow American citizens lost their lives," she said in a statement.

Reuters - Ap

(China Daily 08/30/2018 page11)