The super typhoon in the Pacific Ocean that hammered the Northern Mariana Islands flipped over cars, toppled utility poles and ripped away tin roofs.
Authorities are beginning to assess the damage left behind by Super Typhoon Sinlaku, which first hit the islands on Tuesday night local time and continued with a barrage of fierce winds and relentless rains for hours on Wednesday.
So far, there have been no reports of deaths.
Power was out and many of the roads were impassable across Saipan, a US territory that is the largest of the Mariana Islands and home to some 43,000 people, according to local officials.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said water outages were reported on some of the islands. The agency planned to send more personnel to the region and ramp up shipments of supplies.
The storm also battered Guam, another US territory and the site of several American military bases, with tropical force winds.
The typhoon – the strongest tropical cyclone on Earth this year – was packing sustained winds of up to 150mph (240kph) when it made landfall on the islands, the National Weather Service said.
The monster storm still had winds of 125mph (200kph) late on Wednesday night as it pulled away to the north from the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Rota, the weather service said. Sinlaku is expected start curving toward sparsely populated volcanic islands in the far northern Marianas.
It was still very windy and rainy roughly 24 hours after the typhoon hit the islands, but much better than the previous night, said Jaden Sanchez, spokesman for the Saipan mayor’s office.
Preliminary reports include a lot of flooding, uprooted trees and downed power lines, but no deaths, he said.
Images from Saipan showed residential lots littered with debris and mangled trees. Winds crumbled metal seats at a sports field.
The American Red Cross and its partners were sheltering more than 1,000 residents across Guam and the Northern Marianas, agency spokesperson Stephanie Fox said.
