The strongest storm to hit US territory this year left Saipan, Tinian and Rota looking like ‘a small war just passed through’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Residents of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands are bracing for months without electricity or running water after the islands were slammed with the strongest storm to hit any part of the US this year.

Even after Super Typhoon Yutu had moved away from the US territory in the Pacific, residents were warned by emergency management officials to stay indoors because downed power lines blocked roadways and winds were still strong enough to make driving dangerous.

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the commonwealth’s delegate to the US Congress, said the territory will need significant help to recover from the storm, which he said injured several people.

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In a telephone interview with the Associated Press from Saipan, Sablan said: “There’s a lot of damage and destruction. 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 neighboring islands of Tinian and Rota because phones and electricity are out. About 55,000 people live on the islands.

“It’s going to take weeks probably to get electricity back to everybody,” he said.

Sablan said colleagues in Congress have offered help. He expected a presidential disaster declaration would be put in place.

Typhoon Yutu hits Northern Mariana Islands Read more

The electricity on Saipan, the largest island in the commonwealth about 3,800 miles (6,115 kilometers) west of Hawaii, went out at 4pm on 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 180mph (290km/h) were recorded around the eye of the storm, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early on Thursday local time, said Brandon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“At its peak, it felt like many trains running constant,” Hunter wrote in a Facebook message to the Associated Press.

“The wind was constant and the sound horrifying,” he wrote.

Tinian suffered a direct hit. Saipan and Tinian will be unrecognizable, Aydlett said, adding that the weather service received reports that Yutu’s catastrophic winds ripped roofs from homes and blew out windows.

“Any debris becomes shrapnel and deadly,” he said.

Fallen trees could isolate residents, and power and water outages could last weeks, the weather service warned.

Recovery efforts on Saipan and Tinian will be slow, Aydlett said.

“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.”﻿