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Posted
October 25, 2018 14:40:18
Super Typhoon Yutu has hit the US commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam as the equivalent of a category 5 hurricane, making it the strongest storm to hit any part of the US this year, the National Weather Service says.
Key points:
- Maximum winds of 290kph were recorded around the eye of the storm
- Meteorologist Brandon Aydlett said the islands of Tinian and Saipan will be unrecognisable
- Power was also lost on the island of Guam as the powerful typhoon pbaded nearby
The US has faced a string of powerful storms in recent times, including hurricanes Michael and Florence, which both battered the US mainland and killed dozens of people between them.
“At its peak, it felt like many trains running constant,” Glen Hunter wrote in a Facebook message to The Associated Press.
Mr Hunter lives on Saipan, the largest island in the commonwealth, which is a US territory about 6,115 kilometres west of Hawaii.
“At its peak, the wind was constant and the sound horrifying,” he said.
“We knew it was going to be big … but wow.”
Maximum sustained winds of 290 kilometres per hour were recorded around the eye of the storm, which pbaded over Tinian and Saipan early on Thursday (local time), said Brandon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Saipan and Tinian will be unrecognisable, Mr 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.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.
The powerful typhoon also hit the island of Guam, knocking out power in the early hours of Wednesday morning, local time.
Waves of 6 to 12 metres were expected around the eye of the storm, and flooding was likely, forecasters said.
A typhoon warning was in effect for Saipan, Tinian and Rota. A tropical storm warning was in place for Guam and other southern islands.
The roof flew off the second floor of Del Benson’s Saipan home.
“We didn’t sleep much,” he wrote to the AP in a Facebook message.
“I went upstairs and the skylight blew out. Then the roof started to go. We got the kids downstairs.”
Recovery efforts on Saipan and Tinian will be slow, Mr 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.”
Nearly 200 federal workers were in the Marianas to badist, Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the commonwealth’s delegate to US Congress, said on Twitter.
Six of Saipan’s 10 shelters were full, he wrote,
All ports were closed, and flights into the Northern Marianas were cancelled, he wrote.
The Northern Marianas have a population of about 55,000 people.
AP
Topics:
cyclones,
storm-disaster,
storm-event,
united-states,
hawaii
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