Typhoon’s punch devastates islands
Storm unmatched in U.S. since 1935
Typhoon Yutu’s 180-mph winds overturned cars, knocked down hundreds of power poles and left an island of thousands without a medical center and another without an airport. Buildings were reduced to piles of tin and wood; if a structure wasn’t made of concrete, one resident said, it was probably wiped out by the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit any part of the United States since 1935.
Yutu spent roughly seven hours thrashing the small islands of Saipan and Tinian, the most populous part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, early Thursday local time. Residents of the islands north of Guam are accustomed to typhoons, but quickly attested that this was the worst they’d seen.
Yutu’s gigantic eye enveloped much of Saipan and all of Tinian, leaving the islands “mangled,” as one local official told The Washington Post. Rescue and relief operations have begun, but officials say their efforts are hampered by dangerous weather and widespread destruction, which includes “extensive damage to critical infrastructure,” according to an update Thursday from the governor’s office. One woman on Saipan died during the storm when she took shelter in an abandoned building that collapsed.
“We just went through one of the worst storms I’ve seen in all my experience … ,” local emergency management official Gerald Deleon Guerrero said in a statement.
The Thursday update cited hundreds of downed power poles and a “significantly large number of downed transformers and conductors” on Saipan and Tinian. It said that the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had been asked for “700 to 800 power poles, transformers and additional materials to begin power restoration,” which will have to be done before water service can be restored.
According to figures released by the Weather Underground website, Yutu was tied with the fifth-highest wind speed of any storm on record as it made landfall. Only a few storms, including 2013’s Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, have been stronger, and even then not by much. For the U.S., just one storm — the 1935 Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys — is believed to have been more powerful.