Saipan residents unprepared for typhoon impact

Transcript

The Red Cross in Saipan says residents were unprepared for the impact of Typhoon Soudelor which battered the Northern Marianas on Sunday night, damaging homes and infrastructure across the island.

The typhoon had sustained winds of around 170 kilometres an hour damaging Saipan's power grid and causing a significant oil spill at seaport.

A state of emergency was declared for the Northern Marianas on Monday morning by Acting Governor Ralph Torres.

Executive Director John Hirsh spoke to Indira Moala.

JOHN HIRSH: There was significant damage, really destruction and major damage to all homes that were made of wood and tin. And then there was catastrophic damage to trees and the power grid. There are probably 300-400 power poles that snapped at the bottom and they think that it's going to take 3-4 weeks before they can restore the generator to operating condition.

INDIRA MOALA: Are there many people left homeless after their homes have been damaged?

JH: Yes, we have approximately close to 400 calls already to the Red Cross, which is a very large number of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed. Many, many of those homes lost their roofs as the storms passed. There was major water inundation.

IM: And what's it been like talking to people?

JH: It's certainly, everyone is very shell-shocked here. This is really the fourth storm we've had in the last eight weeks. So people were kind of thinking you know that 'this is going to be just another small typhoon, it's not going to impact us very heavily'. People were very wrong about that. It really caused widespread devastation, there's fuel shortage, there's no power, no water and we have on just our rolls 401 clients who are reaching out to us saying that either there house has major damage or is completely destroyed.

IM: And people weren't prepared for this?  There were no warnings of how big this impact would be?

JH: There was through our national weather service, I think there were people that were aware that the storm was going to be big and strong but people were just pacified into thinking that this one wouldn't be so bad.

IM: Have you spoken to any government officials at all? What are the plans in place to provide relief?

JH: Yeah, I met with the Director of our Homeland Security and Emergency Management as well as the acting governor, we talked about a lot of the most pressing issues and of course those would be providing shelter for those who have lost their homes, making sure there's palatable water and adequate food supply.  Debris removal has already started, they still have somethings they need to fix in the airport, and our seaport is still closed because  I guess during the storm, there was an undetermined amount of fuel or oil that spilled into the harbour so they were trying to find the source of that and basically clean it up.

IM: Do you know how big that oil spill was during the storm?

JH: I really don't know, the earlier reports were several hundred gallons.

IM: The impact of that is really another whole other issue.

JH: Yeah, so our Environmental Protection Agency, and our Coastal Resource and Fisheries personnel have all been down there assessing the and putting up boons to prevent the spill from spreading.  And our US Coastal Guard is also helping to improve that situation.