The liar in the White House better get ready to issue a new stream of frothing prevarications on twitter. His Friday response of “NO WAY” to the death toll in Puerto Rico post Maria is simply more obfuscation and bluster to protect his own inability to accept culpability and failure in the government’s response—the government he is ostensibly in charge of.
The Denier-in-Chief, who simply makes shit up as he goes about his daily business of playing at being President, in-between rounds of golf, will now have to refute names and faces and hospital records and stories from the families, compiled and published by the joint efforts of the Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico, the Associated Press, and Quartz.
I’m sure he’ll find a way to dismiss all this — he’s not into facts — but we need to get the word out, and hopefully this data will be used in Congressional investigations which will take place when we wrest control from Republicans who have enabled Trump in his deadly inaction.
Here’s a look at the government’s actions, as the death count mounted.
- Sept. 20, 2017
Maria makes landfall in Puerto Rico, knocking down power and cell phone service. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supplies run out after two days. Eight days later, a CPI investigation confirms that dozens more died than the then-official death toll of 16, and suggests hundreds more. Public Safety secretary Héctor Pesquera denies the report.
- Oct. 1
Only 5% of Puerto Ricans have power.
- Oct. 3
Luis Manuel Vázquez Rodríguez is found dead on the floor of his bathroom. The 60-year-old diabetic had been in fine health, says his daughter, but struggled to find insulin after Maria. “Everything was chaos. There was no access to anything, to medicine,” she recalls. “Going to the pharmacy meant kilometers-long lines.”
- Oct. 3
Donald Trump visits the island. “Sixteen people certified,” he said referring to the official death toll at the time. “You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together.”
- Oct. 12
US Congress members demand an investigation into hurricane-related deaths. Trump tweets,“We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & the First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!”
- Oct. 12
Joaquín Solivan Ocasio, 43, dies at Manatí Medical Center. Power outages had delayed the diagnosis of a sharp pain in his abdomen for more than 20 days, says his wife. The results arrived two weeks after he died. “My husband had blood cancer—a treatable illness that turned into a death sentence because it wasn’t treated with care.”
- Oct. 15
Felipe Figueroa Rosa, 84, wakes up out of breath in the middle of the night. He couldn’t use his sleep apnea machine because of power outages. “We didn’t have a generator,” says his daughter. “I called the ambulance three times and nothing. It never arrived.” He died three days before his flight to leave Puerto Rico.
Hurricane Maria’s Dead
By Omaya Sosa Pascual, Ana Campoy and Michael Weissenstein | from the Center for Investigative Journalism, Quartz and the Associated Press
After Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans with treatable ailments like bedsores and kidney problems died agonizing and unnecessary deaths, according to dozens of accounts from family members. This was a slow-motion, months-long disaster that continued even as Donald Trump lauded his administration’s response to the category 4 storm.
The chaos that followed in Maria’s wake changed the face of death in Puerto Rico. Young people’s deaths spiked, surpassing the growth in the death rate among the elderly, despite the widespread belief that the hurricane only affected older people and those with preexisting conditions. Deaths from sepsis, a life-threatening complication from infection, rose nearly 44% to 325, compared to the previous three years; kidney-disease-related deaths rose nearly 43%, to 211.
On September 13, 2018, Donald Trump described the official estimate of Irma and Maria-related deaths as a Democratic plot to make him look bad and claimed that the death toll was far lower. The president visited Puerto Rico for about four hours on Oct. 3, almost two weeks after the storm; according to the Demography Record Institute of Puerto Rico, between September 6, 2017, and the day Mr. Trump left the island, there were 640 more deaths than the average during the same period in the last three previous years.
In the absence of a comprehensive official list of victims, the stories collected here are the only source of information that can help explain the historic increase in mortality in Puerto Rico post-Maria.
You can explore the database of Hurricane Maria’s victims they have put online.
“Hundreds of families told us how their loved ones died after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. This database of stories is the most extensive record yet of who died and why.”
There are people tweeting about this story — help get the word out with retweets, or sharing to other social networks.
The Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico (CPI) has been doing groundbreaking work, and they operate on a shoestring. Pay them a visit and give them your support.
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Pa’lante Puerto Rico