In Puerto Rico, Many of the 3,000 Deaths Were Slow and Painful. Just Like the Recovery

Even amid the recriminations over the tardy, checkered federal response to Hurrican Maria, survivors of the storm have always known it killed far more people than had been counted. The evidence arrived over weeks and months at morgues and funeral homes across the U.S. territory of 3.3 ­million. This article chronicles the destruction of Maria, citing the Lab's research: Of 13,000 “cyclone events” since 1950, only five were more intense than Maria—and all of those were in the Pacific and struck smaller land masses.