President Trump took heat on Thursday for questioning a report that said 2,975 people died as the result of a hurricane that hit Puerto Rico in 2017, but the truth is, no one really knows.
Puerto Rico started counting in the first few days after Hurricane Maria hit, but stopped at 64. It then commissioned a study by George Washington University, which this summer put forward an estimate that 2,975 people died as a result of the storm.
That 2,975 number is an estimate that Puerto Rico has accepted, in large part because the island commonwealth has no better number to offer.
To get the number, researchers looked at how many people died in previous years, and compared that rate to the rate seen in the months after the hurricanes. It then made an estimate of how many people fled the island — the more people it assumed had left, the higher the mortality rate would be.
[Opinion: Trump stirs up needless controversy over Hurricane Maria death toll]
“Comparing these projections to observed mortality in the vital registration data, we arrived at our estimates of excess all-cause mortality attributable to the storm,” the study said.
The study said that estimated “excess mortality” was 1,271 in September and October due to Hurricane Maria (which hit in mid-September). The study doesn’t offer a number of estimated deaths during the storm, or in the first two weeks after the storm.
It estimated 2,098 “excess deaths” from September to December, and 2,975 “excess deaths” in the total six month period, from September to February.
Trump has been criticized for saying his administration did a “great job” in dealing with Hurricane Maria’s aftermath, and while the study did not speak to that claim, it did note several problems indicating that Puerto Rico itself was not prepared to handle the storm.
Among its findings:
- “[N]either the Department of Public Safety (DPS) nor the Central Communications Office in the Governor’s Office had written crisis and emergency risk communications plans in place. The DoH’s Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response had an outdated emergency plan, including annexes for Risk Communication in Emergencies and Mass Fatality Management. Agency emergency plans that were in place were not designed for greater than Category 1 hurricanes, and risk messages conveyed to the public in preparedness campaigns were reported by key leaders to inadequately prepare communities for a catastrophic disaster.”
- “According to Puerto Rico Government agency interviews, there were insufficient communication personnel at the time of the hurricane, and surge staffing was not adequately mobilized posthurricane. Respondents reported a lack of formalized personnel structure for emergency communication functions, resulting in inadequate personnel and spokespeople training in crisis and emergency risk communication, deficiencies in coordination of communication between central and municipal governments and between central and federal government counterparts.”
- “Key leader interview respondents perceived the death count to be much higher, and held viewpoints that government leadership was disconnected from the realities of Puerto Rican communities, that there was not transparency in reporting, that information was intentionally withheld to evade blame and that adequate systems were not in place to track the death count.”
- “Our research identified the implementation of public information campaigns prior to the hurricane with public health and safety messages, but the messages did not adequately prepare Puerto Rican communities for a catastrophic natural disaster.”
- “There was limited community and stakeholder engagement in disaster communication planning, and ineffective communication contingency plans in place, resulting in limited public health and safety information reaching local communities posthurricane and alternative communication channels that were not systematically utilized for disease surveillance and information dissemination.”
