Guam residents seek shelter as Typhoon Mawar hits island

A huge storm caused panic in the US territory of Guam yesterday, with residents forced to stock up on supplies and flee to emergency shelters.

Typhoon Mawar is among the strongest storms to hit the Western Pacific territory in decades as rain and wind battered the island.

“What we are feeling right now is the eye going over the Rota Channel,” Governor Lou Leon Guerrero said in a Facebook video.

She was referring to the body of water between the islands of Guam and Rota.

The typhoon was forecast to arrive as a category four storm but it could strengthen to category five.

The last category five to make a direct hit on Guam was Super Typhoon Karen in 1962.

The US military withdrew its ships as President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration in the territory.

Anyone whose house is not made of concrete was urged to seek safety elsewhere before the typhoon arrived, AP reported. Many homes on Guam are made of wood or tin.

By yesterday afternoon, several people on the island had lost power and some lost access to water because of the storm.

Ms Guerrero said the emergency declaration would boost efforts to protect resources, which was “especially crucial given our distance from the continental US”.

She ordered residents of coastal, low-lying and floodprone areas to move to higher ground.

Help from the US is needed to save lives and property and “mitigate the effects of this imminent catastrophe”, Ms Leon Guerrero said in a letter to Mr Biden.

Guam is a crucial US military base in the Pacific. The Department of Defence controls about a third of the island.

Rear Admiral Benjamin Nicholson, Joint Region Marianas commander, authorised the evacuation of defence personnel, dependents and employees in at-risk areas.

All military vessels were moved out to sea as a precaution, the US Navy said. Any personnel still on the island were told to seek shelter.

About 6,800 US service members are assigned to Guam, the Pentagon said.

With rain from the storm’s outer bands reaching the island earlier yesterday, the typhoon had maximum sustained winds of 225kph.

Gusts peaked at 274kph, said Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam.