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The Puerto Rican government is allowing funeral directors and crematoriums to burn the bodies of Hurricane Maria victims without counting them in the official death toll.
The result is a death count that masks the extent of the hurricane’s devastation.
The official death toll now stands at 51, but is widely considered to be a gross underestimation of the actual number of lives lost during and after the hurricane.
Local relief workers estimated that more than 400 bodies were packed into a morgue in Aguadilla, in the U.S. territory’s northwestern tip, and Reps. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) have called for an investigation into underreporting in the official death toll following the hurricane.
The alleged reporting inaccuracies stem from a breakdown in communication between the Institute of Forensic Sciences, the central institute that certifies official hurricane deaths, and funeral homes and crematoriums, according to a BuzzFeed report.
The central institute is also allowing crematoriums to burn potential victims’ bodies without first examining them, meaning that they are omitted from the death toll.
The ramifications of an inaccurate death toll are broad and include the possibility of cheating families out of FEMA relief funds, according to the same report.
Just three fatalities in Aguadilla have been included in the official death toll but staff at the Crem del Caribe, the municipality’s only crematorium, said that they were given permission to cremate at least 42 bodies of people who had died as a result of the hurricane.
They include people who died from a lack of oxygen supply, dialysis patients that couldn’t receive treatment because of the lack of electricity, and people who died of heart attacks, according to BuzzFeed.
Seventy-five percent of the island is still without power, with calls for more scrutiny into Whitefish Energy, the tiny Montana company contracted to repair Puerto Rico’s electric grid.
“A lot of people have died as an indirect result of the hurricane,” Jaime Domenech, director of the Crem del Caribe told BuzzFeed. “Especially older people, who because of their health conditions many of them depended on electricity.”
Vitin Alvarez, a 68-year-old Alzheimer’s patient, was among the elderly who died in the hurricane’s aftermath. His death certificate states respiratory failure as his primary cause of death, BuzzFeed reports.
But his wife, Blanca Alvarez, 63, blames his death on the island’s lack of electricity. She told BuzzFeed her husband died because she could not get gasoline to power the generator he needed for his oxygen machine.
His death certificate makes no mention of this, according to the report.
The absence of guidelines at the Institute of Forensic Sciences for adding hurricane-related deaths to the official death toll contributes to its inaccuracy, according to the report.
Karixia Ortiz Serrano, a spokesperson for the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety, said the institute decides which bodies to add to the official death count on a “case-by-case” basis.
“There are no specific categories, but they look at the situation,” she said, adding that family members are interviewed and bodies are analyzed before decisions are made.