Latest News #229 - Guam
January 22, 2003

Guam bookstore damaged
by typhoon

Scene of the devastation caused by the Super Typhoon Pongsona which hit Guam and the neighbouring islands of Rota, Tinian and Saipan on December 8, 2002. Guam, Micronesia. Photo: Asia-Pacific Regional Service Center/Lynnette Saunders. (MIC03DJ-1)

GUAM, Micronesia — The Faith Bookstore on Guam was one of the many buildings here and the neighbouring islands of Rota, Tinian and Saipan to be severely damaged when Super Typhoon Pongsona hit the area on December 8. Winds of up to 250 kms per hour (150 miles per hour) caused extensive structural damage across Guam, prompting Governor Carl Gutierrez to declare a state of emergency. The typhoon then moved to Rota, cutting off the 1,500 islanders from the outside world, and the other two islands.

Lynnette Saunders, Administration Manager at the United Bible Societies (UBS) Asia-Pacific Regional Service Center in Brisbane, Australia, which is currently responsible for Bible work in Micronesia, was on a visit to Guam, Palau and Yap when the typhoon struck. Not able to fly out for two days following the typhoon, she saw how local people sought to cope with damage to infrastructure, the absence of water and electricity supplies and a severe fuel shortage caused by an explosion at the oil storage depot.

Scene of the devastation caused by the Super Typhoon Pongsona which hit Guam and the neighbouring islands of Rota, Tinian and Saipan on December 8, 2002. Guam, Micronesia. Photo: Asia-Pacific Regional Service Center/Lynnette Saunders. (MIC03DJ-2)

Ms Saunders discovered that “the islanders are masters of understatement”. This was certainly the case when she heard from one of the members of staff at the Faith Bookstore, which has been operating as an agent for Scripture distribution since the Bible Society of Micronesia ceased operations in 1999, that the facility had “suffered some roof damage”. In fact, most of the stock was lost and the building itself has had to be demolished. The managers, Judy and Henry De Vries, were still without electricity and telephone lines nearly a month after the typhoon struck and could use only rain water during most of that time. However, they had not been forced to move to emergency accommodation, unlike some 2,300 of the island’s almost 155,000 residents.