Calls for a 911 Type of Commission to Investigate Puerto Rico Underreported Deaths
A week after a Harvard report estimated that thousands of people died in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria — while the official death toll sits at 64 — several congressional Democrats on Wednesday called for an investigation into the death toll.
The members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said that they will introduce a bill next week aiming to set up an independent commission examining the death toll and how it was handled — similar to the investigation established after the September 11 attacks. But the bill has little chance of going anywhere as Republicans control Congress, and the CHC is made up of entirely Democrats.
Representatives including Nydia Velazquez and Adriano Espaillat from New York, Darren Soto from Florida, and Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, said the Harvard study released last week was a reminder that federal and Puerto Rican officials have failed to reliably account for the number people who died on the island after the Category 4 storm.
"These low numbers have justified a vastly underfunded disaster," said Florida Rep. Darren Soto.
The government's official death count came under suspicion first by the Puerto Rico Center for Investigative Reporting and BuzzFeed News just days after the hurricane devastated the island.
"These numbers drive the narrative about what happened in Puerto Rico and how our government responded, and how we should rebuild going forward," Velazquez said. "We all remember when Donald Trump sat in Puerto Rico and pointed to a death count of 16, suggested that Maria was not, and I quote, "a real catastrophe'."
New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat called relying on non-governmental studies like the Harvard report and the GWU study commissioned by Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo RossellĂ³ "the highest form of neglect and negligence."
"How could we, government, have to rely on private institutions to do our job?" he said.
"We as government must be responsible… These are people that died, they have families, those families deserve to know what was the level of tragedy that hit Puerto Rico," he continued.
Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson added that the Government Accountability Office has accepted his request to audit the death toll. Thompson and Velazquez made the request in a letter in December.
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