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Elusive, and many homes still without a real roof overhead. president trump last week declared the recovery efforts there, a quote/unquote unsung success and dismissed the staggering death toll from the storm. 2,975 people. so what is the real story of what happened to all of these american citizens? cnn's leyla santiago was there before, during, and after for many days after the storm covering the aftermath. great to see you. >> thank you for having me. >> you're telling the story of puerto rico has been so important for everyone to have eyes and ears on the ground. what is the real story, wo...

Ones died at home or die on the way to hospital whereas perhaps in a normal year those people would not have lost their lives. but it took a few months to do the work. we had to make sure they had assembled the records. we needed to go through the airline data to understand about how many people were coming in and out of puerto rico every day. and we took a lot of care with the statistical analysis to make sure that we could develop a number for the government of puerto rico that would be close to reality as possible. >> dr. lynn goldman dean of milkin institute of public health at george wash...

After natural disaster like we saw in puerto rico, the george washington university finding 3,000 sort of elevated casualties, right? and basically saying, look, you can't pin that on the president. people die for all sorts of reasons after an emergency. >> well, first of all, it may surprise some people to know that there is no one way for fema to count a death toll after a natural disaster. there are direct deaths and indirect. so, an example of a direct casualty, a direct death is someone who literally drowns during a flood or hurricane. >> correct. >> an indirect death is an extended power...

Hurricanes that hit puerto rico. when i left the island after the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. this was done by the democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible. "outfront" now, wilynn goldman. she is the dean of the milken institute school of public health at george washington university which conducted this study. thank you so much for coming in. >> thank you for having me, hi. >> this was your study. this is your study. how do you respond to the president saying that he doesn't believe it? >> this is an independent, scientific investigation that was definit...

Methodolo methodology. interviewing the researchers at george washington about the methodology and they said there was no bias in how they did this study. they did not take any pressure from democrats or any other interested party in devising that number. it is of course an estimate of the number of deaths attributed to the hurricane. but it is an extraordinary number. 2,975. much greater than the death toll of 16 which is what the president was told when he made his one visit to puerto rico two weeks after the storm. >> he made his one visit two weeks after the storm. i was in puerto rico six...