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Super Typhoon Yutu tore the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory of some 55,000 in the Pacific, early Thursday, local time one of the strongest tropical cyclones recorded to touch the land anywhere on the planet.
With maximum sustained winds of 180mph, Yutu was the the most powerful storm on Earth this year and the second in the world to have touched American soil, topped only by the hurricane of Labor Day that hit the Florida Keys in 1935. Yutu's eye flew over the islands of Tinian and Saipan, causing what the National Meteorological Service meteorologist Brandon Aydlett described ascatastrophic damage. "
Michael Lowry, a strategic planner for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called him "one of the most intense tropical cyclones We are watching the world record all over the world. "The National Meteorological Service in Guam said that itprobably become the new yard stick by which future storms are judged. "
Despite its impact on thousands of US citizens, the historic and devastating storm seemed like an afterthought in the continental United States.
Marshall Shepherd, director of the atmospheric science program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, said the public and the media tended to pay more attention to hurricanes in the Atlantic.
"I understand on the one hand, but the problem is that when we talk about climate change and hurricanes, the activity in these other basins is forgotten," Shepherd said at HuffPost in an email. "It is essential that people understand that unprecedented storms are occurring on a global scale and threaten many lives."
Yutu's coverage was "rather Spartan," said Phil Klotzbach, a cyclone expert at Colorado State University.
"I fear that most Americans do not know that we have overseas territories, as we discovered last year in Puerto Rico with [Hurricane] Maria, "said Klotzbach.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared an emergency situation in the Northern Mariana Islands. But as of Friday morning, he had not commented publicly or posted on Category 5 typhoon Twitter.
Instead, Trump spent Thursday applaud the Republican candidates before the November elections, to call European leaders, urging caravan migrants toReturn to your country"and blame the media in homemade bomb packets sent to prominent Democrats and CNN.
Trump's silence about Yutu It contrasts sharply with its public reaction to hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Florence and Michael, who hit the American continent.
In the case of these storms, Trump stressed on Twitter that government agencies were prepared. He also participated in televised information sessions and visited the affected areas.
The Trump administration has been widely criticized for its response to the crisis caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which, according to a Politico survey, was "much slower" than Texas relief efforts for Hurricane Harvey. But unlike the Super Typhoon Yutu, Trump tweeted about Hurricane Maria while he was hitting Puerto Rico. And he finally went to the United States, where he spoke at an emergency meeting and threw out paper towels to a crowd of survivors.
Since then, he has denied that nearly 3,000 people have died in Puerto Rico as a result of Maria – a death toll calculated by a government-commissioned study – and hailed his administration's reaction to the storm as "a incredible success and unknown.
In the midst of Trump's silence about the Super Typhoon Yutu, the White House has not announced its intention to visit the Northern Mariana Islands.
On Friday, the territorial governor, Ralph Torres, wrote to Trump asking him to declare a major disaster, which would free up additional assistance from the federal government in the event of a disaster.
"While the joint preliminary damage assessments are underway, the first investigations into the damage caused by the Super Typhoon Yutu are grim and far exceed the destruction observed after the passage of the Typhoon Soudelor in 2015," Torres wrote to the president.
Edwin Propst, a member of the House of Representatives of the Territory, told the Associated Press that he had lived dozens of typhoons, but that it was the first time that he feared for his life.
"We want people to remember that we are Americans and we exist," said Propst.
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