Hurricane Maria

[CharonY]

The official death toll in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria was 64. This number only included direct effects. Kishone et al. investigated whether the hurricane could have contributed to overall change in mortality e.g. due to displacement, loss of infrastructure or interrupted health care. Based on a survey from 3299 household they calculated an excess moratlity of 4645 excess deaths caused by the Hurricane Maria. The authors also asserted that due to survivor bias this number is on the conservative side. 

 

Kischone et al "Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria", JAMA, 2018, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1803972

[iNow]

At least we got their power quickly restored! Oh, wait...

[CharonY]

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Our estimates also indicate that mortality rates stayed high throughout the rest of the year. These numbers will serve as an important independent comparison to official statistics from death-registry data, which are currently being reevaluated, and underscore the inattention of the U.S. government to the frail infrastructure of Puerto Rico.

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Although the government of Puerto Rico stopped sharing mortality data with the public in December 2017 (our request for these data was also denied), in April 2018 the Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico, an autonomous government entity, adopted a resolution to improve the counting of disaster-related deaths and publish all mortality data online without further delay. As the United States prepares for its next hurricane season, it will be critical to review how disaster-related deaths will be counted, in order to mobilize an appropriate response operation and account for the fate of those affected.

 

[Phi for All]

It seems we only count direct deaths, and I'm not sure exactly how they define that. If a person is pinned beneath a falling tree but dies of exposure, is it a direct death related to the storm? Does it only count if the tree causes fatal internal bleeding? We know for fact they don't count when someone's kidneys fail because the electricity for their dialysis machine was knocked out by the storm. These deaths aren't counted as having the storm as a direct cause, even though they wouldn't have happened otherwise.

According to this report, Hurricane Sandy had 147 direct deaths.

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Preliminary U.S. damage estimates are near $50 billion, making Sandy the second-costliest cyclone to hit the United States since 19001 . There were at least 147 direct deaths2 recorded across the Atlantic basin due to Sandy, with 72 of these fatalities occurring in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern United States. This is the greatest number of U.S. direct fatalities related to a tropical cyclone outside of the southern states since Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

Puerto Rico's governor put the damages from the double hurricanes at US$95B, making it twice as costly for less than half the death toll of hurricane Sandy. It seems pretty clear that the lack of response from the US is being downplayed heavily, the same way it was during Katrina. 

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Phi for All said:

It seems we only count direct deaths, and I'm not sure exactly how they define that. If a person is pinned beneath a falling tree but dies of exposure, is it a direct death related to the storm? Does it only count if the tree causes fatal internal bleeding? We know for fact they don't count when someone's kidneys fail because the electricity for their dialysis machine was knocked out by the storm. These deaths aren't counted as having the storm as a direct cause, even though they wouldn't have happened otherwise.

 

"a direct death means that individual or group of individuals died directly because of the storm. They either drowned due to the storm surge or the rain or they were blown away by the wind. Or let’s say the wind pushed them over and caused them to hit their head or something. So a direct death has to be because of the forces of the storm."

http://wlrn.org/post/irma-report-devastation-and-huge-warning-sign

So it would seem that getting hit by a tree and subsequently dying as a result would be a direct death.

Other fatalities that occur because of the storm are called indirect deaths. Similar definitions are given in the NOAA Sandy report

 

According to this report Katrina had 520 direct and 565 indirect deaths along with 307 indeterminate deaths (table 1) (Sandy is 73 direct and 82 indirect; the NOAA report of 147 includes areas outside of the US)

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00042.1

 

 

[Phi for All]

Just now, swansont said:

So it would seem that getting hit by a tree and subsequently dying as a result would be a direct death.

The way I read it, the death would be direct if the person suffered damage from the tree being blown down onto them. It would NOT be direct if the tree merely pinned them, denying access to water so they died of dehydration. It's a bit like saying a gunshot victim died of heart failure.

[CharonY]

29 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

The way I read it, the death would be direct if the person suffered damage from the tree being blown down onto them. It would NOT be direct if the tree merely pinned them, denying access to water so they died of dehydration. It's a bit like saying a gunshot victim died of heart failure.

I doubt that they did a detailed forensic analysis of everyone pinned by a tree to determine that. I.e. someone is found dead in the rubble somewhere after the storm it is almost certainly counted as direct death. 

[swansont]

I'm not sure it matters a lot. The people died.

In one sense, indirect is more important, because many of these are preventable. As would direct deaths that could have been prevented by good evacuation procedures and proper infrastructure for getting them out or protecting them.

And of course the big picture is that way too many people died because of the flaccid response of the US Government.

[CharonY]

6 hours ago, swansont said:

And of course the big picture is that way too many people died because of the flaccid response of the US Government.

Which is of course the precise point of calculating excess deaths in the the aftermath.