Puerto Rico Hurricane Deaths Undercounted By Thousands

It turns out the rumors of a massive loss of life in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria were true. A new study by Harvard University estimates that the official estimate does not count thousands of people who were killed during and after the storm, which hit the island on September 20 of last year.

The new study is not definitive, but it raises serious questions about the accuracy of the official numbers published by the government of Puerto Rice which puts the death toll at 64. Other organizations previously estimated that as many as 1,000 people died as a result of the storm, but the Harvard study puts the estimate much higher at 4,645.

The Harvard study used statistical analysis to arrive at its conclusion. Researchers visited 3,299 household on the island and asked residents several survey questions.

“Statistically, it's like having interviewed the whole island,” Domingo Marqués, one of the report’s authors told CNN.

The survey included questions about deaths in the household, whether related or not to the storm. The researchers then compared the survey data to 2016 mortality data from the island to arrive at an estimate of how many deaths were related to the storm.

The statistical analysis showed that between 793 to 8,498 people died during the storm or in the unsafe conditions that lingered for months afterward. The number cited in the report, 4,645, is the average between the two extremes. While the range of possible deaths is extremely large, even the low end of the range is more than 17 times larger than the official estimate. The exact death toll will never be known.

“The lack of electricity and basic services meant that people couldn't get the help they needed for a long time after the storm," Christy Delafield, a spokeswoman for relief agency Mercy Corps told USA Today. "The elderly, people with health problems and the very young were at particular risk.”

The government of Puerto Rico is not disputing the higher estimated death toll. In a press release, Carlos R. Mercader, executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, said, “The Government of Puerto Rico welcomes the newly released Harvard University survey and we look forward to analyzing it.”

Hector Pesquera, head of Puerto Rico's public safety department, said at a press conference that the island’s government did not have a reason to question the Harvard statistics. A George Washington University study on the death toll commissioned by the government is still forthcoming.

The Harvard report also faulted both the federal government and the territorial governments for an inadequate response to the hurricane. A post-hurricane analysis of the FEMA response plan found that they agency did not anticipate the extent of damage and overestimated the ability of local and territorial agencies to respond.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told USA Today, “We have been supportive of Gov. Rosello's efforts to ensure full accounting and transparency, and those who have suffered from this tragedy deserve nothing less.”

Sanders pointed out that the relief effort was the largest FEMA disaster response in history. At its height, more than 19,000 workers from 80 agencies were on the ground in Puerto Rico.

Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurse United, said the higher estimate matched what volunteer nurses reported on the ground. “Our volunteer RNs came back to the U.S. and said again and again, ‘The people of Puerto Rico are dying. Do something!'” she said.

Castillo said that returning nurses told of people “left to die” and that the government relief effort had “failed its own American citizens.” Whether the failure was the result of incompetence or inability to imagine the devastation that a storm like Hurricane Maria could wreak, for the people of Puerto Rico, the result was the same.

Originally published on The Resurgent

After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Needs Your Help To Survive

Often a story of little consequence can grab the imagination and attention of the nation while a much bigger story passes by without notice. That’s the case right now as the NFL protests block out almost everything else including the admission by the Trump Administration that 21 states were targeted by hackers during last year’s election, the president’s new expanded travel ban and, most sadly, the devastating effect that Hurricane Maria had on the islands of the Caribbean, particularly Puerto Rico.

Maybe it’s hurricane fatigue. Maybe it’s the fact that most of us don’t really think of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as a part of the United States. Maybe it’s just that the NFL is right in our living rooms while the people of Puerto Rico are a thousand miles away in the middle of the Caribbean.

Part of the problem may be the difficulty in reporting news from an island where the power grid has been knocked completely offline and may not be operational for six months. Think about that. An island of 3.6 million people, a territory of the United States, has been effectively moved back 100 years in time.

No electrical power in a tropical climate means no air conditioning and no refrigeration for food. Medical care is difficult without lights and power for medical equipment. The category four storm killed 30 people in the Caribbean, but many more may die in the aftermath of the storm from lack of food, water and medical care.

Without electric power, the island’s manufacturing and tourism sectors of the economy will also crash to a standstill. With factories idle and resorts closed, most of the island’s inhabitants will have no way to support themselves and their families.

The bottom line is that Puerto Rico and the other islands damaged by Hurricane Maria are going to need lots of help for a long time. With FEMA funds almost exhausted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the burden is going to fall on private charities funded by donations from companies and individuals like you and me.

If you are uncertain about what to donate or what charities are worthy of your donation, the FEMA website publishes guidelines for donations and the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) has an online form that helps to steer your donation to vetted organizations. NBC’s Chuck Todd has also identified several organizations that are top rated for their work in Puerto Rico.  

FEMA recommends that you donate cash rather than supplies. My experience volunteering at a shelter in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey confirms that money is easier to deal with than supplies. Cash can purchase exactly what is needed at the time while donations of supplies may or may not contain what is needed at the time. (I think back to an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati in which the station donated 3,000 blonde wigs to Guatemalan earthquake victims.) Supplies must be inventoried, sorted, stockpiled and shipped. That takes manpower, time and money.

Donations of supplies that aren’t needed right away incur costs for storage and take up space. Since the affected areas are islands, virtually everything needed to sustain the people who live there for the next six months will have to be brought in on ships or airplanes. It is much more efficient to purchase large quantities of relief supplies that are ready for shipment than to bundle donations together in a piecemeal fashion.

NVOAD also has a contact form for volunteers who would like to go to one of the areas affected by the hurricanes to help personally. With FEMA and other relief organizations stretched thin by three disasters in quick succession, additional volunteers will be badly needed.

Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands will be dependent on outside aid for survival for a very long time. The chain of disasters is taxing the reserves of relief agencies as well as wearing out relief workers. The citizens of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands need your help.

It’s time to come together to help our fellow Americans on the US islands of the Caribbean. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

How Churches and Individuals Saved The Day During Hurricane Harvey

I had always assumed that FEMA was the primary source of aid for victims of natural disasters such as hurricanes. If my experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey is any indication, I was wrong.

After I returned home in the middle of the storm, we were isolated by flooded roads for a couple of days. Once we could leave our neighborhood, we made our way to our church, which was serving as a shelter for storm victims, to offer our help. After another day or so, with several storm victims leaving to go home, the evacuees housed by my church were moved to another church down the road that was an official FEMA center for relief supplies. My family and I spent much of the week following Harvey’s departure volunteering at this FEMA center a few miles from my house.

What we saw changed the way that I viewed relief efforts for natural disasters. It was not the government that offered the most assistance to those in need. It was private volunteers, both local and from around the country, and private donations of supplies that kept the center in business.

The center was staffed entirely by volunteers. There were people who drove or flew in from Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri and California to offer their assistance. These people took time off from work and paid their own way. The only medical professional at the center was a registered nurse from Arizona who paid her own air fare to come and help.

In the first days, the center was staffed mostly by local volunteers. After a few days, we started to see more Red Cross volunteers and help from the outside. Red Cross would bring shipments of prepared meals, cleanup kits for houses and comfort kits for those in need. In the days that I worked there, I never saw a single FEMA representative.

Most helpful were the churches and their members. Local individuals would bring in food, clothing and other donations. Churches from out of state would rent trucks and trailers and fill them to the ceiling with pallets of water, food, clothes, school supplies, toilet paper, tarps, diapers, pet food and cleaning items such as buckets, bleach and mops.

One truck contained several large boxes (about three feet long by two feet wide and two feet high) that were filled to the top with individual candy bars and chewing gum. As a note to potential donors, while this was appreciated, chocolate candy bars are not the most practical emergency ration for Houston in August where temperatures are normally in the high 90s. This advice also applies to Florida.

We would frequently see large military helicopters such as CH-47 Chinooks and UH-60 Blackhawks flying overhead. The center director told us that the government was flying supplies into Houston and then they were distributed out from the city. We received some supplies from FEMA, in particular several boxes of tarps, but the vast majority of relief items came from the charity of local individuals and churches from around the country.

When the center needed items such as diapers and baby formula, it was concerned citizens who brought them. When we gave out so much food that we almost ran out, it was churches who trucked in enough to allow us to restock.

Through the entire ordeal, I was amazed at how responsive people from around the country were to the specific needs of our little FEMA shelter in small town Texas. We put out requests for specific supplies on social media and the next day they arrived.

FEMA requires shelters to have round-the-clock security, but this was also left to volunteers. After some items were stolen, we heightened security at the center. Volunteers, most of whom also worked all day at the shelter or full-time jobs, took guard duty shifts at night. After the initial thefts, guards armed themselves with personal weapons and radios. In the wee hours of one night, a guard discovered a break-in. The perpetrator fled into the darkness when the guard chambered a round in his shotgun.

As volunteers had to return to their normal lives, the center director requested assistance from the national guard in protecting the center’s residents and supplies. As of this writing, two weeks after Harvey, security is still in the hands of volunteers.

Granted, a natural disaster the size of Hurricane Harvey taxed the ability of FEMA to deliver aid. The storm ravaged hundreds of miles of Texas coastline and caused flooding all over Houston, the fourth largest city in the country, before moving on to Beaumont and Louisiana and wreaking havoc there as well. Our area, a small town on the northeast side of Houston, was far from being the area hardest hit by the storm, but there were still many people who had lost everything.

If it was up to the federal government or NGOs like the Red Cross to offer aid, our town would probably still be waiting for help. The destruction simply covered too much ground and affected too many people for even the federal government to effectively render aid to everyone.

In some cases, people were even afraid to be helped by the government. Wes, a volunteer who came from California by himself to help, told of finding a family of illegal immigrants in an area where the water was estimated to have been 25-30 feet deep. They had gone for days without food or fresh water and were afraid to approach government aid workers for help. Without Wes’s compassion, they might have died after surviving the storm.

When massive need for help overwhelmed the system during Harvey, it was the American citizen who stepped up to help. It struck me that this is the way it should be. If Americans, particularly Christians,  offered more charity to each other on a regular basis, there would be no need for the entitlement state.

We can rise to the occasion during an emergency. It’s a pity that we can’t do so every day. 

Originally published on The Resurgent