Super Typhoon Yutu brings 290 km/h winds to Pacific islands

The Northern Mariana Islands' delegate to U.S. Congress says the southern part of Saipan has been devastated by Super Typhoon Yutu and the U.S. territory's most populated island won't recover for many months.

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan says Friday local time that he has never seen destruction so bad.

Sablan told the AP a day earlier that the entire island sustained damage but that it wasn't the worst storm he had experienced in his lifetime. After touring the south, he says he's changing his mind.

Sablan previously estimated it would take weeks to restore power and services on the island but now says it will take months.

At least one person has died from Super Typhoon Yutu, which officials say is the most powerful storm to hit the United States this year.

The storm crossed over the U.S. commonwealth early Thursday local time.

'It's like a small war'

"There's a lot of damage and destruction," Sablan said. "It's like a small war just passed through."

Sablan said the entire island sustained damage, but there are areas that are worse than others. He has not been able to reach officials on the territory's neighbour islands of Tinian and Rota because phones and electricity are out.

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Sablan says colleagues in Congress have reached out to offer help. He expects there will be a presidential disaster declaration put in place.

In a tweet Thursday evening Sablan said that the typhoon warning for Saipan and Tinian was ended.

'Probably won't have power for months'

The electricity on Saipan, the largest island in the commonwealth about 6,115 kilometres west of Hawaii, went out at 4 p.m. local time Wednesday, resident Glen Hunter said.

"We probably won't have power for months," he said, recalling how it took four months to restore electricity after Typhoon Soudelor in 2015.

Maximum sustained winds of 290 km/h were recorded around the eye of the storm, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early Thursday local time, said Brandon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service.

"At its peak, it felt like many trains running constant," Hunter wrote in a Facebook message to The Associated Press. Hunter lives on Saipan.

"At its peak, the wind was constant and the sound horrifying," he wrote.

Roofs ripped from homes

Tinian suffered a direct hit. Saipan and Tinian will be unrecognizable, Aydlett said, adding that the weather service received reports that Yutu's catastrophic winds ripped roofs from homes and blew out windows.

"Any debris becomes shrapnel and deadly," he said.

Fallen trees could isolate residents, and power and water outages could last weeks, the weather service warned.

'We are in typhoon alley'

It was still dark when Hunter peeked outside and saw his neighbour's house, made of wood and tin, completely gone. A palm tree was uprooted.

Hunter, 45, has lived on Saipan since childhood and is accustomed to strong storms. "We are in typhoon alley," he wrote, but added this is the worst he has experienced.

The roof flew off the second floor of Del Benson's Saipan home.

"We didn't sleep much," he wrote to the AP in a Facebook message. "I went upstairs and the skylight blew out. Then the roof started to go. We got the kids downstairs."

'This is the worst-case scenario'

Recovery efforts on Saipan and Tinian will be slow, Aydlett said.

"This is the worst-case scenario. This is why the building codes in the Marianas are so tough," he said. "This is going to be the storm which sets the scale for which future storms are compared to."

Dean Sensui, vice-chair for Hawaii on the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, was in Saipan for a council meeting. He hunkered down in his hotel room, where guests were told to remain indoors because winds were still strong Thursday morning.

"From around midnight the wind could be heard whipping by," he said in a Facebook message. "Down at the restaurant it sounded like a Hollywood soundtrack with the intense rain and howling wind."

Because he's in a solid hotel, it wasn't as scary as living through Hurricane Iniki in 1992, which left the Hawaiian island of Kauai badly damaged, he said.

"The fact that we still have internet access proves how solid their infrastructure is," he said. "Hawaii and others should study the Marianas to understand how to design and build communication grids that can withstand a storm."