Rota prepares for typhoon season

“We’re the only region in the world where we can get a typhoon at any moment of the year,” Chip Guard, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told a conference of staff from government agencies like the Department of Public Safety, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and the Department of Lands and Natural Resources. “The last couple of years have been fairly quiet, and they have been fairly active in the Atlantic.”

Typhoons most often occur during the rainy season in the CNMI—August to December—and can devastate the islands with surges of ocean water that have the potential to level buildings, heavy rains and winds of up to 150 miles an hour.

The last major typhoon to hit the CNMI was Supertyphoon Chaba, which made landfall in 2004, causing an estimated at $18 million in damage and prompting President Bush to declare the region a major disaster area. Prior to Chaba, Supertyphoon Pongsona and Typhoon Chata’an both ravaged the island of Rota in 2002.

Coordination among government officials as a typhoon approaches, Guard said, is critical to ensuring islands in the CNMI are prepared and can recover quickly when it hits.

“It’s important for the governor’s office and the mayor and the people in charge to work together,” Guard said.

Rota has some advantages over other Pacific Islands when preparing for a typhoon, Guard noted. For example, most of the buildings here are concrete rather than wooden, making them better equipped to withstand high winds. Moreover, the island’s long-time residents have experience with typhoons and how to make it through them, a factor that can make all the difference.

“Rota is in better shape than most places because you don’t get a lot of turnover in the local population,” he said. “Folks here are used to it.”

However, one weakness in Rota’s defenses against major typhoons is the narrowness of its coral reefs. On Saipan, for example, Guard said the reefs provide a natural barrier against storm surges that break the waves far away from land yet Rota’s reefs are close to the shore.

“Rota has some of the narrowest reefs in Micronesia,” he said, adding that many casualties seen during a major storm stem from ocean surges.

The conference was part of a two-day event on Rota that is also slated to include talks on climate change issues, tsunamis and volcanic activity in the region.