Global Courant 2023-05-24 13:12:11
Typhoon Mawar crept toward Guam Wednesday afternoon, bringing hurricane-force winds that knocked down trees and left most of the U.S. territory without power, authorities said.
The storm, the strength of a Category 4 hurricane, was the strongest to approach the Pacific island in years and could intensify Wednesday night, forecasters warned. The Guam Power Authority said the island’s power grid only supplied power to about 1,000 of its approximately 52,000 customers, and it was too dangerous for repair crews to venture outside.
Mawar had not officially made landfall in Guam by mid-afternoon, and the island may have been spared a direct hit, said Brandon Bukunt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Guam. But the storm’s western eyewall had passed over the island, he added, and residents were already feeling typhoon winds.
As a sign of the storm’s strength, it broke the radar unit that sends storm images to Mr. Bukunt’s office, and the largest tree outside the office crashed into the driveway.
The approximately 150,000 people who live on Guam, an island nearly the size of Chicago and located about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines, are used to tropical cyclones. The last major super typhoon Pongsona made landfall in 2002 with the strength of a Category 4 hurricane and caused more than $700 million in damage.
In recent years, damage and deaths from major storms in Guam have been kept to a minimum thanks to stricter building codes and advanced warnings. In most cases, “We’re barbecuing, chilling, adapting” when a tropical cyclone blows through, says Wayne Chargualaf, 45, who works with the local government’s housing authority.
But because it’s been so long since Pongsona, “We have a whole generation that has never experienced this,” he added. “So a little bit of doubt started creeping into my head. Are we really ready for this?”
The center of the storm was about 40 miles east-southeast of Guam about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. the weather service said an update. The storm was moving to the northwest at about three miles per hour and the impact was expected to peak in the early evening.
Mawar had been weakened by Category 5 strength, but maximum sustained winds were still pushing about 140 mph, equivalent to that of a Category 4 hurricane, Mr Bukunt said. The southern eyewall was still offshore but had the potential to bring even stronger winds to the island, along with torrential rain.
“Before we lost radar, there was already some really bad weather there,” he said.
President Biden declared a state of emergency for Guam on Tuesday evening, allowing federal agencies to assist in relief efforts. On Wednesday, the island was firmly in a state of emergency, with evacuation orders issued, a deluge warning and a halt to commercial aviation.
And at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, all aircraft had left the island before the storm or were put in hangars, the Air Force said in an email.
Tropical cyclones are called typhoons or hurricanes depending on where they come from. Typhoons, which usually form from May to October, are tropical cyclones that develop in the Northwest Pacific Ocean and affect Asia. Studies say climate change has increased the intensity of tropical cyclones and the potential for destruction as a warmer ocean provides more energy that fuels them.
Mawar, a Malay name meaning “rose,” is the second named storm in the Western Pacific this season. The first, Tropical Storm Sanvuweakened in less than two days.
Carlo Sgembelluri Pangelinan, 42, who sells container homes at a store in Barrigada Heights, a hilly, affluent neighborhood near Guam’s international airport, said he doubted the storm would be worse than anything he’d experienced.
Still, Mr Pangelinan added, he was concerned about people lacking adequate shelter, and animals without owners to care for them, including stray dogs.
The population of the island is predominantly Catholicand the Roman Catholic Church in Guam said in a message to its congregants Wednesday that the fear and anxiety permeating the island was understandable, in part because Super Typhoon Pongsona had left an “indelible impression” that was still felt more than 20 years later.
There is good that can be found in the midst of storms. “The kindness and caring of people who come forward during such trials is one of them.”
John Yoon, Victoria Kim, McKenna Oxenden and Jin Yu Young contributed reporting.
