The American island of Guam in the Pacific suffered in the night from Wednesday to Thursday the “destructive” gusts of Typhoon Mawar, which also caused flooding and extensive power outages.
Reached by telephone by AFP, the employee of a hotel on the coast described “the windows flying into pieces, the howling of the wind, the trees shattered net”.
“The lobby is flooded with 30 centimeters of water,” added Casey, who works at the Dusit Thani Guam Resort, the property operating with a backup generator.
“I feel the walls shaking. The wind is very strong, I can hear it whistling through the cracks in the doors.”
While local residents are used to storms, “tourists panic about flooding in rooms caused by water streaming through destroyed windows,” she said.
The most exposed populations have taken shelter in refuges at the call of the authorities.
The typhoon, category 4 on a scale of 5, passed north of the island on Wednesday evening and was expected to lose strength during the day on Thursday.
But destructive gusts continued into the night, according to the US National Weather Service. Winds blowing up to 225 km/h were recorded.
Lou Leon Guerrero, the governor of the island of 170,000 people located about 2,400 kilometers from the Philippine archipelago, had earlier called on residents to “seek shelter immediately”.
“I am in a reinforced concrete house and my shutters are closed. I briefly went out, but the winds are gusting with intermittent rain,” Beckie Merrill, a 46-year-old teacher who found refuge in the south of the island, told AFP.
“I worry about the safety of our people. This is the most powerful storm in the past 20 years,” Governor Guerrero warned.
The US weather service had warned of the “triple threat” of torrential rains, damaging winds and potentially deadly storm surges (sea level rises).
The arrival of the typhoon raised fears of coastal submersion phenomena also potentially fatal in Rota, another American island in the archipelago of the Mariana Islands.
The Guam Power Authority, the electricity distribution company on the island, warned that it would wait for a drop in the intensity of the winds to begin operations to restore power, for safety.
Only a thousand homes, out of a total of 52,000, were still supplied with electricity, the company said.
Nearly 22,000 US service members and their families are based on Guam, an island that sees long-range bombers and nuclear attack submarines.
The island is also home to the United States’ major fuel and ammunition reserves in the Pacific. The tourist industry is important there.
At the Hyatt Regency Guam, guests endured the typhoon with philosophy. They were waiting in the lobby, explained to AFP Ryan Rodillon, an employee of the establishment.
“Many rooms are flooded, not because of broken windows, but because water seeps in from the balconies,” he said.
About 60 flights departing from or arriving in Guam and scheduled between Tuesday and Thursday have been canceled, AB Won Pat International Airport said.