Pacific Island Times Vol 3 No. 10 October 2018 | Page 6

Insights
I
Wilda, I’ll never forget you
f the departed Mangkhut was your first typhoon
experience on Guam or Saipan, I suggest you’ve
got a lot to learn if you stick around in typhoon
alley. (If you’re on Rota which took the direct hit
this time, different story.) Mangkhut, as it affect-
ed Guam and Saipan, was what oldtimers refer to
derisively as a “banana typhoon.” It knocks down
the fragile trees and causes a lot of flooding. The
damage is largely limited to tin houses and outdoor
signs. And then, typically, it goes on to build up and
trash the Philippines and Japan.
My own first typhoon experience was on Okinawa
in 1968, where I was stationed in the Army. That
blow lasted three days and defined typhoons for
me. I’ve got vivid memories of being
awakened for duty and stepping out
of bed into a couple of feet of water
blown under the storm doors of the
barracks. We were told that the wind
gauge broke at about 128 knots, but
when I and a couple of other soldiers
caught a cab to our off-base residence,
we were surprised by the relative lack
of damage. Like an American military
base, Okinawa was pretty hardened,
accepting an occasional serious ty-
phoon as a given.
Living for many years on Guam and
then Saipan, there have been a lot of
typhoons, super-typhoons and near
misses. On Guam we hoped the storm
would go north. On Saipan we hoped the storm
would go south. In the aftermath, there was usually
the search for ice to keep the beer cold, since there
wasn’t much else to do. All those canned goods that
we’re to this day urged to stock up on gathered dust
as we ate the barbecue produced by neighbors as
the meat in their freezers melted. I don’t recall ever
going hungry, though weeks without running water
or power gets tiresome long before these things get
restored.
Super-typhoon Wilda in 1994 on Saipan was
different because for the first time, as then CNMI
governor Froilan Tenorio’s public information offi-
cer, I had legal responsibilities to fulfill, some other
than just dealing with the local media. One of these
was figuring out what to do with a herd of FEMA
officials who arrived very early. We farmed them
out to various barbecue parties, since there wasn’t
much for them to do yet. I guess we figured that a
well-fed disaster assessor would be more generous
to those who had lost houses and other property. As
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rom the
comment box
On Guam we hoped the
storm would go north.
On Saipan we hoped the
storm would go south. In
the aftermath, there was
usually the search for ice
to keep the beer cold,
since there wasn’t much
else to do.
will happen in government, there were
lots of meetings which rarely seemed
productive. Fortunately, the people of
Saipan were out immediately cleaning
up the mess without any pressure to do
so from Capital Hill.
I will never forgive Wilda for trash-
ing my favorite dining spot at the time,
the Ship-a-Shore restaurant, a convert-
ed ferry boat tied up off Garapan.
I spent a lot of official time docu-
menting the storm damage, includ-
ing the looting of the CNMI Senate
building on Beach Road by some of
our citizens. Given that one member
of the looting party was a senior police
officer (out of uniform), I was surprised that there
was no pressure to do anything about it afterward.
If you haven’t experienced it, I can assure you that
the aftermath of typhoons provides a great oppor-
tunity of the kind I just mentioned as well as gov-
ernmental malfeasance. Back then a chunk of cash
was released to civil defense personnel just prior to
typhoons. During a pre-Wilda typhoon, a couple of
reliable witnesses informed me that the cash went
for many cases of Budweiser, which were hauled
into the CD HQ at the old Coast Guard station in
San Antonio. While the disaster folks were busy
telling everyone else to stay dry, they definitely had
the supplies to wet their whistles. I wish I would
have had a TV camera there to document this exer-
cise of civic duties.
A longtime resident of Guam and Saipan, Bruce
Lloyd is the associate editor of the Pacific Island
Times. Send feedback to editor@pacificislandtimes.
com
3 top OPA executives
receive walking papers
Cleaning the swamp.
— Raymond Jesse
Yuka Hechanova was a very smart woman
and is the reason why many financial
anomalies were identified and questioned. She
is responsible for draining many GovGuam
swamps on the island.
— Jenei Aguon
Lead by example is the only right doctrine of
ethics.
— Ray Lizama
If this is true and just like that, he cut 35
percent of personnel cost? And they are
unclassified employees? Ms. Brooks, you got
some explaining to do. And I hope you do it
soon because I was planning to vote for you.
— Lea Siruelo
Explain what? That he walks in and dumps
very valuable people?
— Jim Bonnano
Faced with criminal
charges, Tenorio defends
actions again
Remember now. He used to be a cop. If he
can blatantly lie like this about this incident.
What did he do as a cop? All his cases should be
reviewed as well. This guy makes me sick to be
a Republican.
— Steve Domonick Zanini
I was wondering why a felony charge of
possession of a firearm without a valid firearms
ID was not included. There is no portion of
the law under the