Rescue underway in US Pacific islands as super typhoon strikes - global

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Super Typhoon Yutu battered the Pacific Ocean's Northern Mariana Islands with 178 mile (286 kilometers) per hour winds, making it the strongest storm to hit the US territory since 1950. Yutu is the strongest storm on record this year and one of the most powerful ever to hit a USA territory. The National Weather Service says the Category 5 storm is among the strongest to hit one of the Mariana Islands in decades.

 

 

As of 9 a.m. local time, the storm had passed over the islands but Saipan and Tinian will continue to experience damaging winds into the evening, authorities said in an updated briefing Thursday.A tropical storm warning is also still in effect for the nearby United States territory of Guam, which experienced tropical storm force winds and gusts.

 

Hunter lives on Saipan, the largest island in the commonwealth, which is a USA territory about 3,800 miles (6,115 kilometers) west of Hawaii.

 

"It's going to take weeks probably to get electricity back to everybody", he said.

 

"There's a lot of damage and destruction", Sablan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Saipan. Then the roof started to go.

 

Sablan said colleagues in Congress have reached out to offer help and he expects a presidential disaster declaration to free up resources for storm relief.

"The Tinian Medical Center sustained extensive damage".

 

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, the commonwealth's delegate to U.S. Congress, said the territory will need significant help to recover from the storm, which he said injured several people.

He says Yutu is the worst-case scenario, the kind of storm future storms will be compared to.

 

Japan's Meteorological Agency said that as of noon on Thursday, the season's 26th typhoon was moving west near the Mariana Islands with a central barometric pressure of 905 hectopascals. Cellphone and landline service was spotty in Saipan.

 

Dean Sensui, vice chairman for Hawaii on the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, was in Saipan for a council meeting.

 

He said the winds were so strong they ripped the boards off the windows on his house.

 

It's now about 175 kilometers (108 miles) west of the Mariana Islands, moving northwest through the Philippine Sea at 20 kph (12 mph). "It's going to be more of a wind damage threat versus rain".

 

Northern Marianas governor Ralph DLG Torres released a statement saying that the community will overcome the effects of the storm together.

 

Waves of 25 to 40 feet are expected around the eye of the storm and flooding is likely, forecasters said.

 

Damage on Saipan after Typhoon Yutu.

 

"I really don't know I have a number of photos that are just coming in from folks that are on the island of Tinian and also Rota and Saipan".

 

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