An Oahu-based medical team in Saipan for a routine orthopedic clinic witnessed firsthand the injuries and damage inflicted by the powerful Typhoon Soudelor late Sunday night.
Instead of setting up their clinic Monday, Dr. Craig Ono, chief of staff at Oahu’s Shriners Hospital for Children, outreach coordinator Sandy Zukeran and nurse practitioner Cherlyn Caneda volunteered in the emergency room of a Saipan hospital.
In the aftermath of the Category 2 typhoon, Caneda said, the team saw “a lot of lacerations and broken bones” in the Commonwealth Health Center, but few life-threatening injuries.
“Going through what I’ve gone through here is causing me to rethink my preparations for a hurricane or other natural disasters,” said Caneda, a Kaimuki resident. “As we drove around Saipan, you see the damage. … You see a lot of people, their lives have been shattered as a result of the storm, but you also see people go on and build.”
Among the patients treated Monday was a visiting Hawaii island boy who had suffered multiple lacerations caused by a shattered sliding glass door. Caneda said the 15-year-old boy had been holding onto the door when the wind pulled it off its hinges and it fell.
“We cleaned (the lacerations) out, closed up some wounds. Some were kind of deep and required suturing,” Caneda said Wednesday.
With winds of up to 120 mph, Soudelor made a direct hit at about 11 p.m. Sunday on the most populated of the four islands in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.
On Thursday, Saipan residents were still without running water and electricity, and were rationing gasoline. Restoring power could take up to two months, according to the commonwealth’s delegate to the U.S. Congress. Ten generators were being shipped to Saipan to power water pumps, but the harbor was closed Thursday because of a listing boat.
President Barack Obama has declared the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands a disaster area and is ordering federal aid to help the U.S. territory.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said damage surveys were ongoing. More than 500 people on Saipan were in shelters, according to the Red Cross.
About 50,000 people live on the commonwealth’s four populated islands, with most residing on Saipan, which took the brunt of the storm.
After volunteering in an emergency room that was running on generator power, Caneda said the Shriners team opened its clinic on Tuesday. Some arriving families were without water or electricity in their homes, and had watched corrugated aluminum roofs on their homes fly away during the storm, she said.
“When Dr. Ono, Sandy and I come to Saipan, this isn’t a job for us,” Caneda said. “We’ve been coming out for more than 25 years,” referring to Shriners clinics, which are held twice a year in Saipan. “A lot of our patients are really friends and family for us, so it’s been humbling and (we’re) grateful to be able to be there for them.”
The Shriners team, which is expected to return to Hawaii on Friday, was staying in the Fiesta Hotel in Garapan when the typhoon struck.
“I was awoken by the lightning and the noise from the gusts of wind blowing against my glass door,” Caneda said. “It was scary in terms of my own safety. … Sandy and I changed our clothes just in case we would have to leave our rooms.”
Among other things, the storm demolished the hotel’s wooden cabanas, which ended up in a swimming pool.
Caneda said seeing the devastation around the island has left her with a pain in the pit of her stomach. “I get sick when we drive around because you see how much damage there is, but they’re going about their day and trying to make things better, which is kind of encouraging.”
