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At a Glance Super Typhoon Yutu left major damage on the Northern Mariana Islands after a direct hit.

The entire island of Saipan suffered damage and it may take weeks to restore power to everyone.

The governor's office confirmed one death and at least 133 injuries in Saipan.

A lengthy cleanup was underway on the Northern Mariana Islands, where the full scope of the damage left behind by Super Typhoon Yutu was not yet realized days after the powerful storm dealt a direct hit to the U.S. commonwealth.

Officials confirmed the first death from the impacts of the storm on Thursday. The governor's office announced the death of a 44-year-old woman who sought shelter in an abandoned building that collapsed during the storm. She was found dead in the village of Chalan Kanoa on Saipan Island, the statement also said.

"This is an unfortunate incident, but CNMI and federal partners continue to focus on life-saving and life-sustaining operations," said the governor's office, adding in a later update that at least 133 people were hospitalized on Saipan after the storm.

(MORE: Where Yutu Is Headed Next )

Residents on the islands of Saipan and Tinian, which suffered a direct hit from the storm, said they were bracing for months without electricity or running water.

"This was like a huge, super-crazy weather event that’s all but destroyed the island ," Ashley Beck, a 27-year-old teacher in Saipan, told the Wall Street Journal. "I know very few people who haven’t sustained damage so bad that it makes their houses almost uninhabitable. I don’t know how my students are."

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the commonwealth's delegate to U.S. Congress, said the islands will need significant help to recover from the storm, which he said injured several people.

In a telephone interview with the Associated Press from Saipan, Sablan said he has heard reports of injuries and that people are waiting at the island's hospital to be treated.

"There's a lot of damage and destruction," Sablan said. "It's like a small war just passed through."

Sablan said the entire island sustained damage, but there are areas that are worse than others. He has not been able to reach officials on the territory's neighbor islands of Tinian and Rota because phones and electricity are out.

"It's going to take weeks probably to get electricity back to everybody," he said.

Sablan said crews from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were on their way with food and water, and President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration ahead of the storm's arrival. All residents of the Northern Mariana Islands are either U.S. citizens or U.S. nationals.

Facebook activated its crisis response page so residents could let friends and family members know they're safe.

"Many homes have been destroyed, our critical infrastructure has been compromised, we currently have no power and water at this time and our ports are inaccessible ," Tinian Island mayor Joey Patrick San Nicolas told Reuters.

The electricity on Saipan, the largest island in the commonwealth about 3,800 miles west of Hawaii, went out at 4 p.m. Wednesday, resident Glen Hunter said.

"We probably won't have power for months," he said, recalling how it took four months to restore electricity after Typhoon Soudelor in 2015.

Maximum sustained winds of 180 mph were recorded at the time the storm made its direct hit on Tinian and Saipan, tied with Typhoon Mangkhut as the planet's strongest storm of 2018.

"I knew the damage would be significant, but coming out in the morning, even with that knowledge, I was still surprised by how devastating it was ," Saipan resident Jose Mafnas, 29, told the Washington Post.

Lydia Barcinas, who has lived in her Saipan home since May, told CNN.com she rode out Yutu with her family in their pantry , which was flooded by the storm.

"My family stayed because we thought it'll be fine," she told CNN.com. "Now (we are) just trying to find something to eat and drink" and "looking for medicine under the rubble."

Recovery efforts on Saipan and Tinian will be slow, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Brandon Aydlett.

"This is the worst-case scenario. This is why the building codes in the Marianas are so tough," he said. "This is going to be the storm which sets the scale for which future storms are compared to."

Dean Sensui, vice chair for Hawaii on the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, was in Saipan for a council meeting. He hunkered down in his hotel room, where guests were told to remain indoors because winds were still strong Thursday morning.

"From around midnight the wind could be heard whipping by," he said in a Facebook message. "Down at the restaurant, it sounded like a Hollywood soundtrack with the intense rain and howling wind."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.