Hawaii-based Coast Guard team wraps up typhoon aid mission

Coast Guard officials confirmed Wednesday that a team from Air Station Barbers Point has returned after a mission supporting storm relief efforts on Guam following Typhoon Mawar.

In a Tuesday Instagram post, Coast Guard District 14, which oversees operations in Hawaii and across the Pacific Islands region, reported 31 Coast Guard personnel out of Barbers Point, supported by three aircraft, clocked 97.3 hours of flight time, transported 396,231 pounds of cargo and 169 passengers. According to the post, the team completed 19 “vital missions” across 33 sorties.

Coast Guard spokespeople did not respond to requests for additional details on the flights, but according to posts by the service on Twitter, a major task for the Barbers Point team was delivering supplies to Rota, an island of about 1,890 people in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — a U.S. territory neighboring Guam that was also hit by the typhoon.

Though the typhoon caused no recorded deaths in Guam, it left many in Guam and Rota without power.

Hawaii has been an important hub for relief efforts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency chartered planes in Hawaii to airlift supplies from its Diamond Head facility to Guam as well as volunteers from the Hawaii chapter of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, including the American Red Cross and Catholic Charities Hawaii.