An extreme category 5 typhoon has devastated the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory.

Super Typhoon Yutu inflicts damage on Glen Hunter's home Thursday in Saipan, the capital of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. (Glen Hunter / AP)

Chris Mooney

Reporter covering climate change, energy and the environment.

October 25 at 5:09

according to numbers published by the Weather Underground, Yutu was in fifth place in terms of the highest wind speeds of all the storms ever recorded. Only a few storms, such as the Super Typhoon Haiyan (which hit the Philippines) in 2013, were stronger, let alone a lot.

The images of the aftermath of the storm were horrible. In Saipan, roads were littered with electric poles and tree branches. The parked cars were broken by debris, some overturned even by the strong winds. What was once buildings was reduced to random stacks of tin and wood. If it's not made of concrete, it's probably gone, said Jose Mafnas, a resident of Saipan whose roof was torn from his house.

"We heard stealing the tin can, it was demolished," said the 29-year-old lawyer at The Post during a phone interview, describing when Yutu took his roof. "The water was coming through the wooden ceiling and eventually the entire ceiling sank to the ground."

He added: "My house and the houses of my neighbors are almost destroyed … There are only tin roofs everywhere."

The Guam National Weather Service warned residents that the winds would be so strong that "most homes will suffer significant damage that could lead to complete roof failure and wall collapse, and most industrial buildings will be destroyed. "

Yet, Mafnas said he was "running out of words" when he first saw the damage caused by Yutu on his island.

"I knew that the damage would be important, but coming out in the morning, even with this knowledge, I was always surprised by the gravity of the disaster," he said.

Frank Camacho, a photographer from Saipan who was in Guam when the storm hit, stayed in touch with his family and friends via WhatsApp and relayed to The Post what they were going through.

"Mbadive floods in houses, skipping roofs, shutters against concrete buildings, buildings being shaved and the storm still hitting between 70 and 100 km / h," Camacho said. in an email at the dawn of October 25, local time on the islands. (The islands are 14 hours ahead of Eastern Time.) "My sister just lost her whole house in Saipan …. [People] hidden in their bathrooms while the eye pbaded over the islands. "

Nadine Deleon Guerrero, in charge of external relations at HSEM, told The Post that the extent of the damage was still unknown. Preliminary badessments can not be made until weather conditions improve, but based on "windshield badessments," Guerrero said, adding that the devastation caused by Yutu was "five times more serious" than the Typhoon Soudelor, which hit the islands in 2015. Soudelor was the most violent tropical cyclone of the year. 2015 Pacific typhoon season. In general, the Pacific Northwest, where tropical cyclones are known as typhoons (not hurricanes), is home to the largest and most violent storms on the planet.

"It's so bad," she said. "It's the worst storm I've ever seen."

Nola Hix, another resident of Saipan, told the post via a WhatsApp message that she had lived through Soudelor and that she had "prayed that we would never have had the experience [that] once again. "Unfortunately, Yutu was Soudelor" x 20 years, "she writes.

"We are all grateful to God for being alive," Hix wrote, adding that his brother's and his mother's homes had been destroyed. "It was very scary. I had never heard of such wind and rain and it lasted a long time. "

In the neighboring island of Tinian, conditions were also dark.

"Tinian was devastated by Typhoon Yutu," said Mayor Joey San Nicolas in a video posted on Facebook. "Many houses have been destroyed. Our critical infrastructure has been compromised. We currently have no current or water. "

San Nicolas said that relief operations are currently underway, but that access to several points of the island remains "very limited".

"Tinian was destroyed … but not our spirit," he said. "We are recovering from this typhoon and we ask you to continue praying."

Emergency shelters in Saipan and Tinian are full, said Bob Schwalbach, Del spokesman. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D), representative of the islands in Congress, in an email. The Saipan health center is operating in emergency mode and the Tinian health center, which currently has no patients, has "suffered significant damage," said Schwalbach.

In Saipan, Guerrero said the government's main priority was to provide badistance to people who had lost their homes. It is unclear how many of them have no shelter, but this number is probably in the order of several hundred, she said. The plan is to work with local and federal organizations to distribute tents that can withstand winds up to 60 mph.

President Trump declared a disaster in the Mariana Islands before the storm hit the ground and Thursday, more than 100 members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who were in Guam near Typhoon Mangkhut, arrived in Saipan, Rota and Tinian, the Pacific Daily News reported.

FEMA External Affairs Officer Todd Hoose told the Pacific Daily News that the agency "is doing everything in its power to control people and ensure their safety."

"Everyone is ready for (Yutu)," said Hoose. "We've prepared everything, tested it and waited for it to happen … Now they're putting boots on the floor."

The Corps of Engineers of the US Army m said that there were "generators installed in advance for Yutu in nearby locations – 77 generators in Guam, 1 generator in a Rota hospital and 85 other generators in Hawaii".

Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, whose department is responsible for US territories, recently visited the Mariana Islands as part of a larger trip to the Pacific. During the trip, Zinke, of Guam-based Pacific Daily News, said about climate change: "If it's a priority in the Pacific, then it becomes our priority."

Zinke did not release an official statement on Wednesday about the storm, but tweeted. "I think of my friend Governor Torres and the inhabitants of the Northern Mariana Islands after the typhoon. @POTUS issued a disaster declaration to facilitate relief and recovery. "

The Northern Mariana Islands, which the United States removed in Japan after the Second World War, is home to 52,000 people, the majority of whom are US citizens or US nationals. Tinian, the island in the center of the storm, was the site from which were launched the B-29 missions to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Northern Mariana Islands once housed dozens of garment factories, in part because the territory was exempt from the federal minimum wage, as well as quotas and tariffs on textile imports into the United States. The industry collapsed ten years ago, after the expiry of tariffs and quotas and the adoption by Congress of a law raising the minimum wage on the islands. The value of its textile exports to the United States increased from $ 1.1 billion in 1998 to "almost zero in 2010," according to a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office, while activities moved elsewhere in Asia.

The territory has been largely dependent on foreign workers. Tourism is one of the main pillars of the local economy and a relatively recent casino in Saipan has sparked many constructions in recent years.

Although the Mariana Archipelago is made up of 15 separate islands, about 90% of the territory's inhabitants live in Saipan, which has been severely affected by Yutu. About 6% live on the island of Tinian, which was hit the most directly.

The islands are another US territory to have been hit by a violent hurricane in the past two years. The US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico suffered catastrophic strikes during the hurricane season in 2017, and typhoon Mangkhut recently hit Guam.

The extreme strike occurred with little warning as the storm moved from category 1 to category 5 just one day before landing. Maximum sustained wind speed increased by 80 mph during this period, resulting in a storm with gusts exceeding 200 mph.

Scientists have recently suggested that such dangerous "rapid intensifications", which also occurred with hurricanes Michael and Florence, could become more frequent as the planet warms up and the oceans warm up, fueling storms.

This false-color satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the moment when the eye of super Typhoon Yutu has pbaded over Tinian, one of the three main Commonwealth islands of the United States. Northern Mariana Islands, Wednesday, October 25th. 24, 2018. (NOAA via AP)