When the wood-and-tin foundations of my friend Maria Theresa Dizon’s home began to give way from the fury of Super Typhoon Sinlaku on April 14, she and her family were forced to retreat to the only shelter left standing: their car.
“I was pleading with someone, anything, anyone to please just make it stop,” Dizon told me over the phone. “I was just looking at the road, and everything was just falling down, and I was just afraid we would be closed in, and we were. It didn’t seem to end.”
When the storm finally passed many hours later, the only thing left standing in her house was their front door bearing a holy cross.
“Pretty symbolic,” she said.
In the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific, storm preparation is a familiar, rhythmic choreography. When warnings of a super typhoon approaching got around, residents boarded up windows, sealed important documents into plastic bags, and stocked up on food and water. My uncle was among many who waited in miles-long lines at gas stations for fuel.
But Sinlaku defied the script. Though it weakened to a Category 4 storm just before landfall, the downgrade meant nothing to those on the ground who watched their roofs peel away, trees topple like dominoes, cars either submerge or flip over, and even rooftop solar panels rip away from the territory’s main hospital.
Unlike previous typhoons, Sinlaku stalled offshore for hours, battering the islands of Saipan and Tinian with at least 145-mph winds. Later, it passed through them in slow motion. It’s been three weeks, and thousands of residents still have no power or running water on either island. As of May 4, the death toll has risen to 17 across the region, including on the island nation of Chuuk.
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an archipelago of 14 islands with a population centered on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota, is a U.S. territory just north of Guam. Following years of steady decline with residents moving to the continental U.S., the commonwealth’s population has dwindled to roughly 43,000. Just like Puerto Rico and Guam, anyone born on these islands is a U.S. citizen.
Super Typhoon Sinlaku made history as the second-strongest typhoon to develop this early in the year. For many, the benchmark for disaster had always been Super Typhoon Yutu, which leveled Saipan in October 2018. Even as Sinlaku came barreling toward our home islands, many residents were still reeling from Yutu’s remnants, including schools that were still holding classes in brown U.S. government tents, all of which have now been destroyed.
Sinlaku may have successfully dismantled the physical foundations of the Northern Marianas – turning houses and classrooms into ruins and daily routines into survival matches in long lines for food and aid – but it failed to fracture the islands’ deepest infrastructure: a community that refuses to stay broken.
Riding the storm
Erich Soriano Balajadia fell asleep in her parents’ bedroom, despite the howling winds of Sinlaku. Just hours before, she and her family grappled with a difficult choice: seek safety in a shelter or stay behind. Although the shelter might have been the safer move, her mother is sick and has significant mobility limitations, so they decided to hunker down.
When she woke, the winds had snatched the roof from over her bedroom and bathroom. Flooding from the heavy rainfall began to drench everything in their home in the village of Navy Hill. And as the ceiling above her parents buckled, they realized staying was no longer an option. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, they piled into the car and headed south to her uncle’s house. What should have been a 10-minute drive became a harrowing gauntlet of downed power lines and uprooted trees.
They made it, but weeks later, the memory remains visceral.
“The wind was like a baseball bat,” Balajadia told me over the phone on her 21st birthday, her voice steady but haunted. “Just repeatedly hitting and hitting and hitting us.”
According to the National Weather Service in Guam, the total rainfall amounts that fell over Tinian and Saipan ranged from 15 to 25 inches, with storm surge flooding reaching at least five to eight feet. Heavy rain runoff, combined with the storm surge, significantly increased flooding in low-lying areas.
Growing up in the village of Chalan Kanoa on Saipan, just a few blocks from the beach, I have never experienced floodwaters rise knee-high. But in photos and videos from friends and family after Sinlaku, the village I grew up in is almost unrecognizable. Just a few minutes’ walk from my childhood home, the main cemetery near Mt. Carmel Church, where I attended mass growing up, was inundated with water, debris, and uprooted trees.
In the nearby village of Chalan Laulau, 18-year-old Chelsy Reyes remembered the moment she and her family fled for her uncle’s unit on higher ground at 3 a.m. As Sinlaku made landfall, water started to seep into their apartment. By the time her family went outside to escape, they waded through the darkness in waist-deep water, the wind lashing their faces as they fought to keep their belongings and their two dogs above the surface. They stayed at her uncle’s place for three days, mostly awake, until the shelter-in-place order was lifted.
“When I first stepped out, I was really nervous. I felt my heart pumping, like my body was in a flight or fighting mode,” Reyes, who is CHamoru and Filipino, told me. “It was hard to just open my eyes and look, and the moment I did, I just saw everything got destroyed.”
No school … again
Both Balajadia and Reyes are students at the Northern Marianas College, which suffered a massive hit during Super Typhoon Yutu in 2018. When I visited home in February this year, I was asked to talk to students about my journalism career. Upon arriving on campus, I noticed, against the backdrop of a brand-new building that was set to open later this year, many of the classes were still held in temporary structures like the tents provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I went up to NMC a few days ago, and everything was destroyed,” said Reyes, who majors in natural resource management. The rest of their spring semester was canceled after the typhoon. “There were more plans to build other buildings on campus, but now they have to focus on rebuilding the campus.”
Other elementary and junior high schools had also been holding classes in FEMA tents since Yutu, exposing a deep geographic divide in what “American education” actually looks like compared to the solid, structural certainty afforded to children in the continental U.S.
Classes still operating out of tents more than seven years after Yutu “should not have happened,” said Lallane Guiao-Seng, who I went to high school with and now lives in Connecticut, where she is pursuing a law degree. Her family’s homes on Saipan, where her 9-year-old son lives with her parents, were decimated by Sinlaku. “Schools should have already been rebuilt to stronger, typhoon-resistant standards before the next disaster hit.”
For Balajadia, this is the fourth time in her life that her schooling has been disrupted. After Typhoon Soudelor hit in 2015, she was still in 5th grade, and her classes were only held in the afternoon. When Super Typhoon Yutu arrived, she was in Hopwood Junior High, one of the middle schools that was obliterated by the storm, which later held classes in the FEMA tents.
When I visited home in 2019 to report on a post-Typhoon Yutu story, I noticed the ground surrounding the tents was loose dirt. Students told me that when it got windy, they would inhale so much dust that they would see dirt when they coughed into a napkin. The water and electricity would also constantly turn off.
“I didn’t learn anything that year again,” Balajadia said. “I went into high school the next year, and I didn’t know how to do basic algebra. I remember being so mad, and thinking, like the audacity to ask us children, especially a lot of us who just lost everything, to focus on school.”
Then the COVID-19 pandemic came. Balajadia was a high school freshman, and when the lockdown ensued, the school year came to a halt. Grades were either pass or fail. Now, Sinlaku is disrupting school yet again.
It takes a village
In the aftermath of a storm, one thing is certain for many across the Marianas: the islands’ strongest infrastructure isn’t made of concrete, but it’s the way people show up for each other.
“I know it’s really hard for everyone,” Reyes said. “We lost everything, but the most important thing is we didn’t lose each other.”
The challenge that many are already too familiar with after two strong typhoons is going through the slow, arduous process of requesting emergency relief funds from FEMA, whose budgets and staff have been slashed by the Trump administration. Although President Donald Trump approved disaster relief for the Marianas archipelago ahead of the storm, many wonder how many resources will be available to help the islands recover in the long term, especially as climate change accelerates and increases the likelihood of strong typhoons.
“[U.S. territories] should not feel overlooked or underserved compared to states, especially when it comes to disaster preparedness, infrastructure investment, and long-term recovery,” Guiao-Seng said. “If people don’t know we exist, it’s easier for our needs to be ignored.”
For now, residents who sustained minimal damage to their homes are doing what they can to help community members who need them the most. Even people who moved to the continental U.S., like me, have rallied to launch and amplify mutual aid groups, GoFundMe links, and donation sites across many states.
The Ohala Foundation, a nonprofit group founded by a family from Tinian in the wake of Super Typhoon Yutu, also sprang into action to provide free food to community members. A GoFundMe link they launched has raised nearly $40,000, and on April 26, they distributed 600 bags of food to 600 families on Tinian.
Photos of Chelsy Reyes’ home after Typhoon Sinlaku. (Image credit: Chelsy Reyes)
Many people I talked to say the recovery process after Sinlaku feels more efficient and faster than post-Super Typhoon Yutu in 2018. After Yutu, parts of the islands transitioned from wooden to metal power poles. My friend Lara Torres, a hair and makeup artist from Saipan, said the local government cleared roads faster this time around, making it easier for people to get back out, gather tools, and start rebuilding.
Because her home didn’t take a major hit from Sinlaku, she said she’s been dropping off pillows, slippers, diapers, wipes, laundry detergent, and feminine hygiene products at shelters and families. One time, she even bought ice cream for the kids at the shelter.
“It might seem simple, but that moment really felt like something small that could bring a bit of joy and normalcy back to them,” Torres told me. “At the end of the day, it’s really just about showing up for our people in whatever way we can, and reminding them they’re not alone in this.”
Back in the village of Kanat Tabla, where Dizon’s home once stood, she found out that looters stole towels, water gallons, and gas containers. After posting about it online, the community showed up to help. Dizon said she felt like breaking down many times, but she wanted to be strong for her family, especially her mother, who is a cancer survivor.
“Even in the midst of so much loss and pain and uncertainty about how we’re moving forward, there are folks out there helping and calling to see you personally,” Dizon said. “It’s so beautiful and heartwarming that people would do that even if they’re in the midst of their recovery – and that says a lot about our community and our shared values.”
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