Maria devastates Puerto Rico as aid delays become a federal scandal

Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico as a high-end Category 4 storm on September 20, 2017, destroying the island’s power grid and causing a long-running humanitarian crisis. Puerto Rico later adopted an official death toll of 2,975, based on a George Washington University mortality study. Federal watchdogs later found serious problems: FEMA lost visibility of 38 percent of commodity shipments worth about $257 million, and HUD’s inspector general found that more than $20 billion in recovery aid was unnecessarily delayed.