CNN "State of the Union" interviews during 2018: on Environment

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Government inaction caused 3,000 deaths in Hurricane Maria

OCASIO-CORTEZ: What happened in my family is what happened to thousands of Puerto Ricans, where, in the neglect and government inaction, there was so little response. My grandfather was in a medical facility [which lost power], and he had passed away in the middle of the night. The people who pass away in these storms are the most vulnerable. They are children with illnesses. They are our elderly. And when power is not restored, when infrastructure is not taken seriously, these are the first people who pass away in storms. And what we saw in Puerto Rico was a mass death of 3,000 people. It was the worst humanitarian crisis in modern American history. And many, many people impacted by the storm point to government inaction as the cause of death.