rico increased by 472. the government is reporting 55 people died at the hands of hurricane maria. >> it's accurate based on the factual information that we received, yes. >> reporter: this is puerto rico's secretary of public safety in charge of the death count. it appears for whatever reason that the death toll is much higher than what has been reported. politicians, news outlets like cnn, have raised questions about the accuracy of those numbers. so we decided to count for ourselves. cnn called 279 funeral homes. we were only able to reach about half of them. we asked, how many of the deaths were believed to be related to maria. despite the official death toll, they claim 499 hurricane related deaths in the month after the storm. that's nine times the government's numbers. why the gap? >> because as i said before, i work on factual.