Live Breaking News & Updates on Hurricane Maria Made Landfall
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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. ....
I ve been in office 132 days. for 70 of those days, we ve been actively responding to harvey, maria and the california wildfires as well. each one of these events could truly be catastrophic events, but they happened in rapid success of a 25-day period which is obviously unprecedented. fema spending $200 million a day cleaning up those disasters that the fema administrator brock long just laid out there as he testified before a senate panel this morning. defending the government s response to this year s hurricane season, especially in puerto rico. on this halloween, it is still very much a nightmare on that island. it s been almost six weeks since hurricane maria made landfall there. nearly 70% of the island is still without power. now, multiple reports that the ....
Hours, the governor saying that he now wants the puerto rico electric power authority, the board for prepa to cancel that contract. we re still awaiting comment from prepa officials. we understand there is supposed to be a news conference later this afternoon. still no immediate comment from whitefish energy on the governor s statements, but we did speak with the ceo yesterday and he seemed to have no clue that this was coming. he said that he would be in puerto rico as long as it takes. and what has been getting some attention is all of the questions, alex, about how they managed to get this contract. the ceo told me yesterday that he actually managed to do it by reaching out to prepa officials through the social networking site linkedin and did so after hurricane irma, stayed in touch with prepa officials and flew down to san juan on september 26th, six days after hurricane maria made landfall. still, many questions about how ....
Infrastructure, it did knock out power to a million people. right after hurricane irma, this whitefish ceo says that he reached out to officials here on the island through linkedin. exactly, social networking site. he said he got ahold of them and stayed in contact with them over the next few weeks. when hurricane maria hit several weeks later, that storm knocked out power to eventually the entire island. it was on september 26th, six days after hurricane maria made landfall, that he flew down to puerto rico, met with the officials, and that s when they decided to hash out that contract, but yes, he says that while they hashed it out, they were using their cell phone lines to go through the hall ways because the building they were in didn t have power. and they say he and the head of preppa are basically admitting this one part of the contract that said that fema had reviewed and approved this contract, that that part was actually inaccurate and it should not have been inside. in an in ....
We will push forward. if there is wrong doing, you know, in this process or in any process, there will be hell to pay. with nearly three quarters of puerto rico still without power more than a month after hurricane maria made landfall, the government is looking into a $300 million contract between the islands electrical utility and montana-based whitefish utility. that is backed by a major trump donor and based in the hometown of interior secretary, ryan zinke. the white house has denied any involvement in the selection of whitefish, and fema said it had concerns about how the contract was procured. the cia of whitefish fired back in an interview with nbc. i think there s people out there on a witch hunt looking for something that does not ....