The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Sunday defended President Trump’s criticisms of a study that estimates nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Brock Long called the studies “frustrating” and argued that they are “all over the place.”
“I think the president is being taken out of context there,” Long said. “I mean, I talked to the president every day this week, and the secretary of homeland security, and we discuss what we’re trying to do as a result of last year.”
“I don’t know why the studies were done,” Long told Chuck Todd when asked about the president’s claims that the study was “done by Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.”
Trump has taken aim at a study by the George Washington University, commissioned by the Puerto Rican government, which estimated 2,975 people died after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September — far higher than the initial death count of 64. The 2,975 death count estimate was made the official death toll for the storm.
A handful of studies have put the death tolls higher and lower than the near-3,000 number, but all estimates are above that initial count of 64.
“The numbers are all over the place. FEMA doesn’t count deaths. And if you take what’s going on with Florence, the deaths that are verified by the local county coroners are the ones that we take.”
Long tried to distinguish between direct deaths — “wind, water, waves, building collapsing” and indirect deaths.
“The GW study looked at what happened six months after the fact,” Long explained. “You might see more deaths indirectly occur as time goes on because people have heart attacks due to stress, they fall off their house trying to fix their roof, they die in car crashes because they went through an intersection where the stoplights weren’t working.”
FEMA, Long said, looks at “all kinds of studies,” and claimed spousal abuse rates go up after disasters: “You can’t blame spousal abuse after a disaster on anybody.”
Long praised Trump’s support for FEMA during its ongoing response in North and South Carolina, where Tropical Depression Florence continues to batter the area days after landfall as a hurricane.
“One thing about President Trump is that he is probably the one president that has had more support for what goes on back here. And I think he’s defensive because he knows how hard these guys behind me work day in and day out for a very complex situation.”
In addition to questioning the validity of the George Washington study, Trump called the federal government’s response to Hurricane Maria “incredible unsung success” on Tuesday.