Page 50 - John Sutter News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I don't think we were prepared. we didn't realize we needed to have inventory, manufacturing for a major catastrophe like there. a lot of mismanagement. >> reporter: but power was just one snafu. shelter was another. a month after the storm, i found anita sleeping on a bed soaked with rain water, the smell of mold thick in every room. what is your biggest frustration today? what do you need more than anything else? >> blue tarp. >> reporter: blue tarps, the mayor told me. i need a thousand. it's been raining a lot. operation blue roof was supposed to fill that need. but when cnn investigative ...

>> reporter: but given that hospitals remained dark, hot, and unsterile for weeks, given that hundreds of thousands were drinking dirty water and sleeping on soaking beds under broken roofs, few believed the body count could really be so low. >> and that sort of raised a lot of red flags for people. >> reporter: including cnn investigative reporter john sutter. >> because what we were hearing anecdotally was that there were hospitals where the morgues were overflowing with people. there were certain towns where the number of dead seemed to almost match the official count which then was 16. pre...

>> what is your biggest frustration today in? what do you need more than anything else? >> blue tarp. >> blue tarps the mayor told me. i need a thousand. it's been raining a lot. operation blue roof was supposed to fill that need. but when cnn investigative reporter john sutter dug into arm corps of engineers' records, he found nearly 50,000 requests for tarps still unfilled almost three months after the storm. including carman who had broken her arm sweeping water out of her living room. [ speaking foreign language ]

17? >> 16 certified. >> 16 people certified. 16 people versus in the thousands. you can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. >> but given that hospitals remained dark, hot, and unsterile for weeks, given that hundreds of thousands were drinking dirty water and sleeping on soaking beds under broken roofs, few believe the body count could really be so low. >> and that sort of raised a lot of red flags for people. >> including cnn investigative reporter john sutter. >> because what we were hearing anecdotally was that there were hospitals where the morgues were...

Really hard to find anybody on the island who would agree with that, even some of the president's supporters. fema boasts like a record number of flights, a record amount of food and water sent, but unfortunately, as we learned tonight, it came too late. too much came too late, and it's all about timing for these folks who were, as we found out, by suing the puerto rican government, dying of water borne illnesses because there was no fresh water for them. there are 300 schools now have closed due to that mass exodus. you saw one of the diaspora living in orlando where they're trying to contrib...