Puerto Rico governor orders recount of hurricane death toll

The governor of Puerto Rico ordered all government agencies to reopen their books and initiate a recount and review of certified deathsthat have occurred since Hurricane Maria, after weeks of reporting by various news outlets pointed to a possible severe undercount of storm fatalities.

The territorial government has attributed 64 official deaths to the storm and its aftermath, but the New York Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting in Puerto Rico have used vital statistics data to show that the number of deaths in the weeks after the storm far exceeded those of the same time period in previous years. The independent analyses put the death count at likely more than 1,000.

Gov. Ricardo Rossello told The Washington Post last week that there was “no intent to hide the number of deaths” relative to the storm and that “accountability broke down” in the wake of Hurricane Maria. But his government is committed to reevaluating death certificates that attributed many of the casualties to natural causes.

“We always expected that the number of hurricane-related deaths would increase as we received more factual information — not hearsay — and this review will ensure we are correctly counting everybody,” the governor said in a statement on Monday.

The government will now reexamine medical records, interview family members and call doctors for more information to determine whether deaths identified as “natural” need to be reclassified. Rossello cited the time it took to determine the final death toll for Hurricane Katrina to ask for patience as they conduct their review.

It’s been nearly three months since Maria knocked out power across the island and thousands are still in the dark. Physicians described horrific conditions inside hospitals and nursing homes in the immediate aftermath after the storm due to the lack of power.

[INTERACTIVE: Sin luz — the daily miseries of life without power]

Today, less than half of the island has little or unreliable access to electricity, making life extremely difficult for the sick and elderly who depend on life-saving medical equipment, medicine and treatment to stay alive. Families consistently recounted stories to media outlets about loved ones dying after failing to receive dialysis treatments or having their respirators fail during the crisis. The Puerto Rico government also has documented four suicides and several other deaths related to a bacterial outbreak.

In a statement on Monday, Rossello said he welcomes the news analyses but the government “cannot base any official fatality related to the hurricane count on statistical analysis.”

“Every life is more than a number, and every death must have a name and vital information attached to it, as well as an accurate accounting of the facts related to their passing,” he said in the statement.

Rossello provided a flow chart detailing the processes by which his government has been documenting the deaths using guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in recent weeks, Puerto Rico government officials acknowledged failures in the documentation complicated by the telecommunication difficulties. As each news report questioning the official death count published, members of Congress began calling for investigations into the death count.

Hector Pesquera, the Puerto Rico secretary of public safety, has repeatedly dismissed those media reports, saying his department, which includes the Department of Forensic Sciences, has followed the law as best they could under the circumstances. But when presented with evidence from news organizations about specific cases, Pesquera has ordered reviews in recent weeks that resulted in their certification, adding those individuals to the official death count.

“The number is likely to go up,” the governor told the Washington Post last week. There is “no agenda to minimize...but to do it diligently.”

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