Incomplete documents from the local Police show that 894 reports were issued for alleged “natural” deaths, 3-4 weeks after Hurricane Maria hit the island, between October 1 and 23.
According to documents, almost 300 death reports do not disclose the person’s age. 200 of those deaths happened in elderly care homes while another 200 or so deaths were in Hospitals. 72 of those dead bodies have not been identified yet and another 49 are not even identified by neither name, sex nor age. Bodies keep piling up in mobile morgues offered by the Military, as Hospital morgues and private morgues are full or don’t have electricity to store the bodies.
From death reports that were identified by sex, 397 were females. The lack of information is making the process of identifying bodies very hard. There are times that the only information available from a body is the location where it was found. There are many older people’s bodies that it’s currently unknown whether they died from lack of equipment needing electricity, disease or natural deaths. There’s also many young adult bodies without any death report or information attached to them that need to be examined in order to determine the cause of death.
The official death count from the Government stands at 55 direct deaths resulting from the Hurricane, although hospital staff confirm the number is close to 400 but they won’t come forward publicly as they are not allowed to talk about the matter.
