Transcript
Mark Rabago: Super Typhoon Hagibis is hurtling towards Japan, hope they're safe there. But thankfully, the CNMI was left relatively unscathed by that super typhoon and we're really, really happy and thank God that except for some banana trees and small trees, we didn't get much damage.
Mackenzie Smith: So is there much to be done in the way of recovery efforts?
MR: Yeah. To begin with we were still not fully recovered from last year's Super Typhoon Yutu. So everybody was like panicking and thinking, oh my god, here we go again. A sense of deja vu descended upon the residents of the CNMI, Saipan especially. Fortunately, Hagibis went north of Saipan, it grazed the northern part of Anatahan which, fortunately, was uninhabited. So there was no damage when it comes to the local population because there were no people there to begin with. Except for some really, really hard rain, strong winds and some flooding, especially north of Saipan, we were ok during the storm.
MS: You mentioned the remaining fear from Super Typhoon Yutu. There's still hundreds of people in tents and makeshift homes. How are people feeling who have been affected by that storm?
MR: Well, everybody's facing ... when a storm comes or typhoon, everybody's facing it with a ton of abundance, abundance of caution. So most of them -- 148 to be exact, made up of select 34 families -- went to the evacuation centers that were opened yesterday by the government. So they they made a beeline to the evacuation centers and were safe. And an interviewee, they had said that they went there because of that, they had let's say a mild type of PTSD. They were still have trauma from Super Typhoon Yutu, so they just packed up and left and went to the evacuation centers and fortunately when they went home, their house was still intact.
