Possible super typhoon threatens US Pacific territories still recovering from last storm

HONOLULU (AP) — Residents of U.S. territories in the western Pacific were bracing Friday for a possible super typhoon, just months after the region was hit by the strongest tropical cyclone on Earth this year.

Power still hasn’t been fully restored in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands after that super typhoon, Sinlaku, brought ferocious winds and relentless rains in April. Some people are still living in tents after their homes were destroyed.

“We’re getting ready to do this all over again,” said Edwin Propst a former lawmaker who works in the governor’s office on Saipan, where it was already Friday. “The timing is terrible.”

Typhoon Bavi was expected to become a super typhoon by Sunday night to early Monday, when it is forecast to reach the Marianas, said Paul Stanko, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service on Guam.

A cyclone becomes a super typhoon when it has maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 kph) or stronger. Super typhoons are equivalent to a high-end Category 4 or Category 5 storm, Stanko said.

Bavi was 760 miles (1,223 kilometers) east of Guam on Friday with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (129 kph), the weather service said.

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Some residents are hoping Guam takes the brunt of Bavi to give their neighbors in the Northern Marianas a reprieve while they slowly recover from Sinlaku, Stanko said.

“That’s what we’re actually hoping for because then Saipan wouldn’t get it as bad,” he said.

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Propst was hearing the same from others on Guam.

“That’s so island-style,” he said. “God bless them for saying that.”

Guam is located west of the International Date Line and is known as “Where America’s Day Begins,” as it is hours ahead of Hawaii, Alaska and the U.S. mainland. It is home to two large U.S. military bases.

Propst said residents were covering windows with plywood and storing gasoline because there were long lines at gas stations for weeks after Sinlaku.

The Rev. Francis Hezel, assistant pastor of Santa Barbara Catholic Church in Dededo, Guam, said he’s hoping no island takes the brunt of the storm. But he said he wasn’t too worried, having lived through numerous typhoons. He was hopeful Bavi would change course.

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“Right now the pattern is heading towards us, but those patterns change,” he said.

Still, church workers and residents were preparing.

“This is getting to be the normal thing now, typhoon preparedness,” Hezel said. “It’s happening more frequently.”

El Nino increases hurricane season activity in the Pacific. Experts say the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet.

While Sinlaku didn’t cause on deaths on land, Propst said residents were still mourning the six crewmembers of a cargo ship that overturned during the typhoon. Searchers found one body but the U.S. Coast Guard suspended the more than 100-hour search before finding the rest.

Propst said while a lot of progress has been made in recovering from Sinlaku, “we’re not quite there yet.”

“A few more months would have been good,” he said.