Guam Asks U.S. Disaster Relief

A day after Guam was raked by a severe typhoon with wind gusts estimated at more than 180 mph, the U.S. territory today asked for a federal disaster declaration.

Although Typhoon Pongsona had moved away from the island, Guam still was being shaken by winds up to 70 mph.

No deaths were reported, but the entire island was without electricity, and water and sewer systems aren’t expected to be fully operational for several weeks, Gov. Carl Gutierrez said today. “There is no doubt that the impact of this latest storm will be devastating,” Gutierrez said in a letter asking President Bush to declare Guam a federal disaster area.

Pongsona hit Guam on Sunday, covering the island for hours. The sustained wind speed estimated at 150 mph around the eye of the storm gave Pongsona “super-typhoon” status. The storm blasted some spots with gusts up to 184 mph, officials said.

Barrigada resident Jackie Cabreras said her brother’s house lost its roof and his mother-in-law’s house also lost part of the roof. “They ran over here during the typhoon,” she said. “When they were running here, the wind was pushing against them. My other brother had to go out to the porch to pull them in.”

A wind speed of 117 mph was clocked before the National Weather Service’s wind sensor failed, along with its radar.

Gutierrez said it would take some time to determine the typhoon’s full impact on island infrastructure because of the extent of the damage and the limited number of engineers available to do surveys.

“The situation is that we have a very severe storm lasting a very long time,” governor’s spokesman John Ryan said. “After a storm of this severity, we are looking at a lot of damage -- a lot of things loose and to the point where 40-mile winds and 50-mile gusts might snap something off that normally it would not.”

Eight people missing after a fire at a fuel tank farm operated by Mobil Oil Micronesia were later accounted for, officials said.

By early today, the storm was centered about 100 miles due west of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. Saipan is about 100 miles northwest of Guam.