A group of Democratic senators wants the Department of Homeland Security to provide "accurate" death count in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, The Hill reports.
The senators, who include Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Kamala Harris of California and Dick Durbin of Illinois, made their request in a letter to DHS Acting Secretary Elaine Duke, according to the website.
"We urge you to provide all necessary resources to confirm that storm-related deaths are being counted correctly," the senators wrote.
They claim the official count of 48 dead does not include tallies from media reports that 450 people have died since the island was slammed by Hurricane Maria. In addition, 69 people are reportedly missing.
The number of additional deaths and the missing came in a report by Vox.
"We knew from reports on the ground, and investigative journalists who've also been looking into this, that this (the official count) was very likely way too low of a number," said Eliza Barclay, an editor at Vox, USA Today reported.
Now, senators are urging DHS to accurately find out how many people have died as a result of the hurricane.
"The need for an accurate death toll is especially important because President [Donald] Trump seems to be using the number of fatalities to determine the quality of the disaster response," they said in the letter.
And they added: "Given President Trump's recent threat to withdraw relief workers from Puerto Rico, it is crucial that he and the public not receive erroneously low fatality totals."
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