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A powerful super typhoon unleashed its fury on two isolated U.S. islands in the Pacific, bringing with it devastating winds and relentless rain. The storm ripped apart tin roofs and sent tree limbs flying, forcing residents to seek shelter.
Super Typhoon Sinlaku relentlessly hammered the Northern Mariana Islands throughout the early hours of Wednesday. The storm, moving slowly, inflicted significant damage upon the islands of Tinian and Saipan, which are home to nearly 50,000 people.
In Susupe, a village on Saipan, the powerful winds stripped the roof from a commercial building and snapped tree branches. A blue sedan ended up on its side amidst the chaos.
Resident Dong Min Lee captured a video showing a car precariously perched atop two others in the parking lot of his apartment complex. The fierce winds also tore away part of his balcony railing.
“I hope people will pay attention and offer help. The damage here is truly extensive,” Lee remarked in a Facebook message.
Preliminary reports include a lot of flooding, uprooted trees and downed power lines, said Jaden Sanchez, spokesperson for the Saipan mayor’s office. There were no reports of deaths, he said.
Authorities were advising residents to remain indoors and away from strong winds, but Mayor Ramon “RB” Jose Blas Camacho was out in the community assessing the damage, Sanchez said.
The typhoon — the strongest tropical cyclone on Earth this year — was packing sustained winds of up to 150 mph (240 kph) when it made landfall on the islands, the National Weather Service said.
Tropical force winds and torrential rainfall also led to flash flooding on Guam, a U.S. territory to the south with several U.S. military installations and about 170,000 residents, the weather service said. Earlier, it hit the outer islands and atolls of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia.
The American Red Cross and its partners were sheltering more than 1,000 residents across Guam and the Northern Marians, agency spokesperson Stephanie Fox said.
‘Rain was coming through everywhere’
“I’m guessing anything that was made of wood and tin did not survive this,” said Glen Hunter, who grew up on Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands as well as its capital, known for its resorts, snorkeling and golf.
“It was a losing battle because the rain was coming through everywhere,” he said. “Every house is just flooded with water, no matter what type of structure you’re in.”
Ed Propst, a former lawmaker in Saipan who works in the governor’s office, said he heard “banging and clanging through the night.”
“We haven’t heard of any — knock on wood — deaths so far,” he said, attributing that to residents heeding warnings to take shelter if they weren’t in a concrete home.
Winds at 75 mph (121 kph) or greater were expected to continue through Wednesday afternoon as the eye of the storm was moving northwest of Saipan and Tinian, said Ken Kleeschulte, acting science and operations officer for the National Weather Service on Guam. Even as winds slowly subside to about 50 mph (80 kph), they will remain too strong for people to safely go outside for at least a day and a half, he said.
Sinlaku will start to curve toward sparsely populated volcanic islands in the far northern Marianas, he said.
Still recovering from a 2018 typhoon
In Guam, where Typhoon Mawar knocked out power for days in 2023, U.S. military officials warned personnel to shelter in place. The military controls about one-third of the land on Guam, a critical hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific.
Tourism-dependent Saipan — the site of one of World War II’s bloodiest battles in the Pacific — was still recovering from 2018’s Super Typhoon Yutu when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Hunter said. The economy has yet to rebound, he said.
Yutu destroyed 85% of the Saipan campus of Northern Marianas College, said the school’s president, Galvin Deleon Guerrero. The institution secured $100 million in grant funding to rebuild.
“Just as we were finally beginning to recover and rebuild, we get hit with this,” he said. “Climate change is real.”
He said he worries about people still suffering from the post-traumatic stress of Yutu.
“We are an incredibly resilient people,” he said, noting that he’s Chamorro, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands. “But just because we’re resilient doesn’t mean that we should be subjected to this on this frequent basis.”
Disaster declaration
President Donald Trump approved emergency disaster declarations ahead of the latest storm for Guam and the Mariana Islands. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was coordinating support across multiple agencies, dispatching nearly 100 FEMA staff as well as other personnel.
Super typhoons are the equivalent of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic, with winds of at least 150 mph (240 kph). There have been more than 300 super typhoons identified over the past 80 years by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Guam.
Typhoons are “very common” in the Pacific, but the peak season is similar to the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from summer to fall, said Jason Nicholls, AccuWeather’s lead international forecaster.
“As we’ve seen this year, you can get tropical systems in the West Pacific any time of year,” Nicholls said. “But getting them in April is a little unusual.”
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