A Year After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico Finally Knows How Many People Died

Route Fifty: The grisly business of counting the dead after a natural disaster would seem to be a straightforward one. There is a certain number of people alive before the event, and there is a certain number after. Subtraction should yield a figure similar to the number of death certificates issued, and the number of loved ones families claim have been lost. That total, a composite of incalculable amounts of personal and familial grief, is how people make rough estimates of a disaster’s magnitude and scope.

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