HONOLULU — Super Typhoon Yutu crossed over the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands early today as the equivalent of a category 5 hurricane, making it the strongest storm to hit any part of the U.S. this year, the National Weather Service said.
“At its peak, it felt like many trains running constant,” Glen Hunter wrote in a Facebook message to The Associated Press. Hunter lives on Saipan, the largest island in the commonwealth, which is a U.S. territory about 3,800 miles west of Hawaii.
“At its peak, the wind was constant and the sound horrifying,” he said.
Maximum sustained winds of 180 mph were recorded around the eye of the storm, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early today local time, said Brandon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.
Tinian suffered a direct hit. Saipan and Tinian will be unrecognizable, 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.
“Gonna be quite a scene when the sun comes up,” Hunter wrote to the AP early today.
It was still quite dark when he peeked outside and saw his neighbor’s house, made of wood and tin, completely gone. A palm tree was uprooted.
Hunter, 45, has lived on Saipan since childhood and is accustomed to strong storms. “We are in typhoon alley,” he wrote, but added this is the worst he has experienced.
Power went out the previous afternoon, and Hunter was bracing for months without electricity or running water. All government offices and schools shut down two days ago. A few gas stations ran out of gas by Tuesday evening, he said.
“We knew it was going to be big,” he said, “but wow.”
Recovery efforts on Saipan and Tinian will be slow, 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 assist, Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the commonwealth’s delegate to U.S. 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 canceled.
