Counterparts in the Honolulu office took over their duties. Guam’s weather service office in Tiyan said it would shut down operations in the morning for workers to get home to families and assess damage at their homes. “It’s going to take a few days to clean it up.” “We’ve got tons of work to do,” Wooley said. A chainsaw-wielding relative helped clear downed branches. When day broke, he found their outdoor china cabinet toppled and its contents shattered on the ground. “It was like a freight train going on outside,” said Thomas Wooley, who recounted how wind and rain pushed through the aluminum shutters of his family’s concrete home overlooking Tumon Bay. Guests scrambled to stack chairs to brace the doors, and windows buckled and creaked. In Tumon, on Guam’s northeastern shore, winds tore a granite countertop from a hotel’s outdoor bar and tossed it into the air. Many wooden or tin homes he passed were badly beaten or collapsed. He drove around in a pickup truck looking for supplies to repair his mother’s roof, but most stores were without power and only accepting cash. “My mom’s house didn’t escape,” he said, adding that his mother stayed with him in his concrete home during the storm. Winds peeled back the roof of Enrique Baza’s mother’s house in Yona, allowing water to damage everything inside. But we brace ourselves for the cleanup, repairs, restoration afterwards.” “It’s not our first rodeo,” she said via text message. She told The Associated Press they tried to sleep but were awakened “by violent shaking of the typhoon shutters and the whistling strong winds.” Leah del Mundo spent the night with her family in their concrete home in Chalan Pago, in central Guam. At what felt like its peak intensity, the winds screeched and howled like jets, and water swamped some homes. In coordination with the FAA Agana Air Traffic Control Tower, the airport has decided it will accommodate humanitarian and cargo flights to Guam.Īs the typhoon crept slowly over the island, it sent solar panels flying and crumbled part of a hotel’s exterior wall to the ground, according to videos posted on social media. Won Pat International Airport Guam completed damage inspections with recovery efforts underway. Guam Waterworks Authority was working to restore water service and had issued a notice advising customers to boil water. Guam Power Authority said crews were working to restore power to critical and priority facilities such as a hospital, water wells and wastewater facilities. “We have weathered the storm,” Leon Guerrero said, adding that “the worst has gone by.” Leon Guerrero said in a video message late Thursday morning that roads were passable, but residents should avoid driving and stay home due to ongoing strong winds. The scope of the damage was difficult to ascertain early on, with power and internet failures making communication on the far-flung island difficult. Wednesday as a Category 4 storm at Andersen Air Force Base on the northern tip of the island, weather service officials said. The strongest typhoon to hit the territory of roughly 150,000 people since 2002, Mawar briefly made landfall around 9 p.m. “Most of Guam is dealing with a major mess that’s going to take weeks to clean up,” he added.
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