Guam 'open for business'
By David Briscoe
Associated Press
HAGATNA, Guam — Five months after the most costly U.S. storm of 2002, federal emergency workers finally are packing up and leaving the denuded palm trees and battered buildings of Guam.
Associated Press
It's been a long and difficult recovery, but Gov. Felix Camacho says he is telling the Japanese and Koreans, for whom the U.S. territory has been a favored tourist spot, that his island is "open for business sooner than they anticipated."
Guam International Airport has seen fewer visitors arrive since a supertyphoon hit in December. The territory's tourism has been down nearly a third.
Relief workers held their breath as another potential typhoon swept toward the island last week, but the tropical storm diverted and dissipated before it could do more damage to the island that advertises itself as the place where America's day begins — 14 time zones ahead of New York.
"This has been a long one, but very satisfying in many ways," said Federal Emergency Management Agency coordinator David Fukutomi, who is closing down the federal agency's field operation set up in a wing of Micronesia Mall.
The Dec. 8 superstorm, Typhoon Pongsona, killed only one person on the U.S. territory of 150,000 people but did an estimated $250 million in damage, triggering a massive federal assistance effort. At the peak, about 1,000 disaster relief workers from more than a dozen Washington agencies were on Guam for the storm recovery effort.
"We had a pretty substantial and unique federal response with all pieces of the federal family," Fukutomi said Friday.
The emergency operation actually began with Fukutomi's arrival with a small team just before the storm hit. Predictions had been that it would miss Guam but could damage other U.S. territories in the Western Pacific.
Fukutomi took a direct hit in his Marriott Hotel room and has been working on the island every since. FEMA pulls out in one week.
Associated Press
The Small Business Administration offered the biggest chunk of federal assistance, handing out $150 million in disaster loans to be paid back at low interest. One of the last assistance packages was announced last week: $2.6 million to replace 70 damaged wood and metal framed school buildings with typhoon-resistant concrete structures.
A statue of Confucius presides over a cemetery overlooking Guam's main tourist district, where some hotel rooms are still boarded up from damage by Typhoon Pongsona last December.
About $4.4 million is still needed to fix all the schools damaged in the storm, officials estimate.
Rebuilding after the disaster posed different challenges from storms on the Mainland because relief goods couldn't simply be trucked from other territories or states. Guam is about as far-flung as you can get from Washington and still be on American soil, and Fukutomi said every shipment took complex coordination and plenty of lead time.
A major fire at portside oil storage facilities also cut off gasoline supplies for 10 days, adding to transport problems in the storm's wake. Supposedly typhoon-resistant concrete utility polls across the island also snapped, cutting power that was only fully restored months later.
Pongsona's winds reached 180 mph — 150 mph on Guam — and also wreaked havoc on the islands in Micronesia's Chuuk state, 620 miles to the southeast.
Outside FEMA's temporary Guam headquarters, giant cranes continue to work on the mall's exterior that was battered by Pongsona and other storms.
In other lingering evidence of the storm, some hotel rooms on Guam remain boarded up, workmen try to put back together a giant "slingshot" amusement ride that lies alongside a main road, and landscaping palms around luxury tourist spots along Tumon Bay have yet to grow back all their leaves.
While Asian and Pacific economies in general have been suffering from a series of setbacks in recent months — the impact of the Iraq war, global terrorism and fears of the SARS virus — Guam was hit by a quadruple whammy with the addition of its worst typhoon in a quarter-century.
The territory's tourism is down nearly a third, but Guam Visitors Bureau head Tony Lamorena says that with the pileup of disasters, it's hard to tell which is accountable for the droves of Japanese tourists who have stayed home.
More than 90 percent of Guam's tourists are Japanese.
Territorial Gov. Camacho, in his May 13 State of the Island address, said Guam has come out of the typhoon better than it was before. Repair of the water and power system brought improve-ments, including plans for underground power lines, he said.
Correction: Guam is 20 time zones ahead of Hawai'i and 14 time zones ahead of New York. A previous version of this story contained incorrect information.
