It has been a few weeks since Typhoon Mawar passed through the Marianas through and, on Saipan at least,1 things are mostly back to normal.
When traveling in a poor place, it is easy to note things that are done better back home that would help if adopted. It is only more so when your job literally involves parsing wrongdoing from systemic failure.
That can seem overly negative, so I am trying to note things here that I wish we would do back home. Normally the ‘oh I wish we had these back home’ statements refer to regional recipes or produce unavailable back home or to innovative gizmos like the Japanese toilets manufactured in the future. When it is a governmental operation- a nice park, public transportation, a functioning healthcare system, a lack of AR-15s - it is often something that would require a massive cultural change or investment.
But there is one thing that should immediately be adopted throughout the Gulf Coast that they have on literally every building here: retractable storm shutters.
Before 2015, there had been several decades without a serious storm here. In 1986, Typhoon Kim wrecked the entire chain, but three decades elapsed before a direct hit. Then, there were two in quick succession that changed how seriously preparations are made for approaching cyclones.
In 2015, Typhoon Soudelar made direct landfall on Saipan on August 2, just three days after reaching typhoon strength. In 2018, the most powerful typhoon of that year, Yutu, hit on October 25. It was at its strongest at landfall, easily a Supertyphoon when it hit Tinian and Saipan. Per the JMA, 10-minute sustained winds were at 134 mph, with 1-minute sustained winds at 170 mph, and gusts of up to 190 mph. That means the baseline winds were the speed of an F3 tornado and the gusts almost to an F5, but not pinpointed - several hundred miles wide as it circled the eye.
Amazingly, only two people died on island. The storm-surges, flooding, and building collapses that often cause high body counts in mainland hurricanes are not quite the concern here, since it is sparsely populated and always has substantial rainfall.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey destroyed every unit of the 50-year-old Port Aransas condo complex where two generations of my family spent our summer vacations. I was in Corpus Christi, only 30 or so miles away. I was a bit involved in the recovery efforts. Through that, I learned a bit about Texas’s government-run high-wind insurance program, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.2 After Harvey, there was discussion about the moral hazard of the National Flood Insurance Program after the storm dumped preposterous amounts of rain around Houston. Some of this was political point-scoring from folks pointing out the irony of Texas politicians criticizing big-government responses to disasters while having their own big-government market distortions, but the point was made on the right as well.
These critiques are only more ample for Texas, which actively bills itself as being a place of deregulation. One of my earliest posts was written during the time our independent grid failed and our most notorious politician scampered off to Cancun. The Texas windstorm program is more localized, meaning that the risk-pooling mechanism is less effective. Because of this, it is appropriate for the regulator to require mitigation measures beyond inspections and appraisals.
Obviously you cannot just create the conditions here that keep damage relatively low. The buildings here are made of reinforced concrete. Some of the structures are still here from the war despite ceaseless bombardment and invasion 75 years ago. It wouldn’t be practical to expect that kind of construction in the Gulf. Few buildings are more than two stories tall and there are more options for construction materials on the mainland. There are simply too many people who want to live and recreate on the Gulf for them to build like they do here.
But starting nearly a week before the storm hit the island, the population started filling up plastic water bottles3 and taking out cash from the ATM.4
This is because there is a well-advertised scheme of levels of preparedness that would be updated under the imprimatur of the governor regularly, with the language of which agencies had input, were consulted, and what to do. Ironically, it is through social media - primarily facebook - that this clear information was distributed. The media sites were all on the same page and neighbors told each other what the steps were. This kind of public health communication works best the more local and trusted a source is, so it is unlikely that there would be such a thing in Texas, where there is never going to be a disaster that affects the whole state.
The primary thing that should be adopted are the there are vertical, currogated steel shutters on each of the windows that slide closed. Starting a few days before the storm, every building on island closed their shutters.
These shutters started as a private thing required by insurers5 but seeing how cost-effective they were, were funded by several tranches of FEMA grants.
The shutters are accessible from the exterior. Public works crews came through and used cherry-pickers to close the upper story ones that couldn’t be closed from interior windows. Other crews and volunteers closed all of the ones on all of the buildings that had not been closed by the occupant.
The benefits are many. Replacing glass panes is more difficult here when everything has to be shipped. In a hot, humid jungle island, a broken window for a few weeks - even if covered- means a loss of expensive air conditioning and the ingress of critters.
There are also two curb-cut effects with these related tothe problem of abandoned businesses and buildings here. Records are very bad here. Three weeks after the storm, it is clear now which of these businesses and houses are not actually open. The public works people closed them, but if the business-owner didn’t ever open it, there is a reason to start looking into if the business is closed or if the owner is even on island.
The other is that if the storm is very bad, all of the buildings are going to be locked down automatically. Business owners and store owners won’t stay behind as frequently out of fear of looters6 if the structures are all locked down.
All told, I was very impressed with how the CNMI handled its storm prep. I will leave you with one indelible and bizarre memory from when I was waiting out the storm with Tupu and Cookie.
During the dark part of the storm, a few hours after I took this, the Filipinos that are my down-the-hill neighbors were blasting their karaoke, turned up a bit louder than normal to drown out the wind. Most of the songs drifting up the hill were in tagalog. I could see the light coming in from below and hear several different voices taking turns. I know about ‘Korean style’ and ‘Japanese style’ and ‘American style’ karaoke, but Filipino-style was a new one for me. It is common to adopt a persona and do an impression of a singer in English, even if you don’t speak the language.7 I was mostly tuning it out until I heard some familiar strains.
There are some incongruous songs that you hear all of the time, but the covers typically have an island remix of ukuleles and a reggae beat. I have heard at least six different versions of the Bellamy Brothers “If I said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me.” But I noticed one that seemed so odd and incongruous that I took a video of it when a cover version was being played at a restaurant with a palapala over the bar and a loco moco shirt for sale: John Denver’s “Country Roads.”
Sure enough, I heard through the open door - where I could see the glow of cheap colored disco-ball lights - a dozen-strong choir of besotted Filipinos absolutely belting- despite the torrential rain and the wind-bent coconut trees - in thickly accented English:
COUNTRY ROOOOAAADDSS! TAKE ME HOOOOMEE! TO THE PLAAACE!! I BELOOOONG!!! WEST VIRGINIAAA!! MOUNTAIN MAAA MAAA! TAKE ME HOOOME! COUNTRY ROAAADS!
Guam and Rota were hit much harder. Despite Guam’s substantially higher military infrastructure and disaster response capacity, about a quarter of the island is still without power.
“Association” is a really silly word for “Agency.”
The tap water here is not potable. There is a complicated system of dropping off delivery of those big blue jugs that I still refer to as ‘Ozarka bottles.’
People carry and use cash here much more than on the mainland. This precaution was more related to thinking that internet or power would go out and cut off card access.
Most public safety things that eventually become requirements started as private insurance mitigation requirements or programs to reduce premiums - sprinkler systems, smoke detectors, fire escapes.
This fear is often unfounded - reports of looting and societal collapse after a disaster are often outright hoaxes. I recommend the Atlantic series “Floodlines” about the aftermath of Katrina. But people feel what they feel and folks will often make things worse by staying back to defend property by force.
I was acting as self-appointed MC at Karaoke in Garapan last week and a guy who I could hardly understand requested ‘Wonderful World.’ I asked if he wanted Sam Cooke or Louis Armstrong and he looked confused, so I growled the question in my best Satchmo and he gave me a big thumbs up. This five-foot tall Filipino dude with a high-pitched voice then proceeded with an ABSOLUTELY PERFECT rendition of Louis Armstrong singing that song. It was the third best karaoke thing I have seen on the island.
"Country Roads" was popular karaoke in the Philippines when I lived there in the 80's! It was not unusual to find a country western band performing at a local bar in one of the larger citties.