The U.S. Coast Guard launched an aerial search on Friday for six people aboard a disabled cargo ship that went silent near Saipan in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Sinlaku. The storm battered the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam with catastrophic force.
The ship, a 145-foot dry cargo ship called the Mariana, registered in the United States, first reached out to the Coast Guard on April 15 to report that it had lost its starboard engine and was in need of assistance, according to Petty Officer 3rd Class Avery Tibbets of the Coast Guard.
Authorities set up an hourly radio check-in with the crew, but when the afternoon of April 16 came around, the ship stopped responding. Its last known position was roughly 125 miles north-northwest of Saipan, Tibbets said. The nationalities of the six crew members were not immediately known.
A Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules was deployed to search the area, but fierce winds forced the plane to turn back to Guam. The search was expected to pick back up at daybreak Saturday.
Typhoon-Force Winds
Sinlaku produced typhoon-force winds that reached out 275 miles from its center, according to the U.S. National Weather Service Guam, as the system subjected island residents to nearly 48 hours of sustained and violent winds. That extended battering delayed emergency responders from even getting a clear picture of the destruction, let alone beginning recovery operations."It slows down our ability to respond to those needs, and I think it's more physically and mentally impactful to those that have to go through that," said Robert Fenton, FEMA regional administrator for Region 9, which covers Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The scope of the damage—particularly to power and water infrastructure in the Northern Marianas—is still being tallied, but Fenton said the path to recovery will be a long one.
"We think this will be a multimonth mission of emergency power," Fenton said.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and a host of other federal departments, including the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Health and Human Services, were ramping up their on-the-ground presence as shelter-in-place orders began to lift Friday, according to Fenton.
"This is a very complex event, but we have a lot of experience and have worked very closely with Guam and CNMI over the years to prepare for these types of events and are well-positioned to do that again here today," Fenton said.
Beyond the search and rescue effort, the Coast Guard was also working to reopen the Port of Guam and other regional ports, calling it one of its "highest priorities.” U.S. Air Force helicopters were set to help assess damage on smaller, more isolated islands across the Northern Marianas, according to Fenton.