Rain, rain everywhere and not a drop to drink

For some Typhoon Nabi evacuees, it was not just the inconvenience of abandoning their homes to move to an evacuation center. They also had to contend with the crowded conditions at the shelters and the lack of generators that made it impossible to get water.

Marianas High School vice principal and shelter manager Joe Borja said the school does not have a generator to support the water needs of the evacuees, which could be a problem if they continue to stay at MHS.

Borja said the school already had more than 102 evacuees as of 4:30pm yesterday, with 56 adults and 46 children. He said people began arriving at the school at 8am yesterday.

He said that, due to the islandwide power outage, the Emergency Management Office and Public School System were supposed to provide the evacuation centers with generators as backup but this has not happened.

As of press time yesterday, he said that neither the PSS nor the EMO had responded to their need. They have been waiting for the generator for six hours already. This meant that the school did not have a water supply for the evacuees, which also meant that the evacuees were forced to use the school’s restrooms even without water.

“I am very disappointed,” he said.

In a similar case, Tanapag Elementary School was also faced with a generator problem yesterday. Shelter manager Lou Cucil said that earlier in the morning, PSS had provided a generator but this eventually broke down, leaving the school with no power for its water supply.

Cucil said they began accepting evacuees at the Tanapag school as early as 4am yesterday. The school had 36 evacuees. She said that PSS promised to bring an extra generator for the Tanapag school.

There are nine evacuation centers set up across Saipan.

Full accommodations

Koblerville Elementary School was not able to accept more evacuees yesterday due to its limited space, according to shelter manager Joe Eptison, forcing them to redirect some evacuees to Marianas High School and William S. Reyes Elementary School. He said they already have 69 people occupying the designated shelters in the school.

The WSR Elementary School had 66 evacuees—45 adults and 21 children. Shelter manager Jun Aquino said they began accepting evacuees around midnight yesterday, with most of the evacuees being redirected to WSR from Dandan Elementary School or Koblerville Elementary School.

The Kagman Community Center had to transfer 132 evacuees to Cha Cha Oceanview Middle School yesterday past 2pm due to limited space at the community center. Other shelters included Garapan Elementary School, San Vicente Elementary School, and Tinian Elementary School.