15 Jan. 88) On the 7th of January 1988, weather forecasters at Kwajalein discovered that a tropical storm had developed several hundred hundred miles southeast of the atoll. They predicted that the storm would hit the southern part of Kwajalein by 0800 the next day.
Everyone spent the time left before impact by securing or storing in shelters anything that could be blown away. At the airport, heavy equipment and trucks were parked around exposed aircraft in order to protect them from coral rocks and boulders that were sure to come from crashing waves only a hundred and fifty yards away. I had no idea what preparations, if any, were being made on Ebeye.
I was scheduled to work the processing center down at Echo Pier from 2200 hours till the storm passed. There were two Marshallese constables assisting me but after the last boat returned from Ebeye at 0100 hours the harbor was shut down and there was nothing left to do but check the pier and watch the winds rise.
Even as the storm drew closer, crews continued to secure boats for the expected winds. The clouds sped by in a definite arc from the southeast. Coconut trees bent as gusts of wind roared across the island. Rain squalls came down sideways and water began to come into the processing center.
All police officers were out patrolling the streets, assisting wherever they could. About 0400 hours the housing area began to take on water as high tides and towering waves battered the shore. The base commander ordered an evacuation and our department used buses and vans to move families to a more secure location.
The sustained winds were getting stronger and gusting over 65 miles per hour. There was nothing to do but wait.
At 0710 hours, as a small amount of sunlight managed to illuminate the gray clouds and turbulent lagoon, the island radio announcer said that the eye of of Roy was now twenty miles south of Kwajalein.
I stepped out the rear of the building and looked down the pier. Waves were smashing into it, exploding high in the air, then the water was carried over the pier and boats into the harbor on the other side. A manhole cover suddenly lifted up and blew into the lagoon. I peered around the corner, up 6th Street toward the oceanside. Giant waves were pounding the Pacific Club and the Snake Pit. Spray from the waves flew over the tops of coconut palms. Rocks sailed through the air like cannon balls. The RM ordered all officers off the streets.
We got a break after 0800 when the eye of the storm began to track west. Winds and waves subsided gradually over the next four hours.
Late in the morning a medical team boarded one of the landing craft to aid a Marshallese man on Ebeye who had been injured by the storm. According to one of the boat crew members, the man climbed on his metal roof and attempted to nail it down before it blew away. But a strong gust picked him and the roof up and deposited them both against the side of another structure. Part of the man’s brain had fallen out of his head and he died in the Kwaj hospital a few hours later.
Only essential personnel were allowed on Ebeye for the next couple of days so the only news I had was from the island newspaper and Marshallese workers who reported to work.
Kwajalein Island received minor damage for the most part. A few roofs and awnings were blown off and the Snake Pit lost a wall to the Pacific. Rocks and parts of trees made Ocean Road hard to navigate but it was all good a week later. The storm also uncovered the bodies of some Japanese soldiers who had been buried in mass graves after the American invasion of 1944. Top wind gusts were 83 miles per hour.
The island of Ebeye, as I feared, did not fair well. As the storm approached, residents told me, the only information they could get was from the AFRTS television (Armed Forces Radio and Television) station broadcast from Kwajalein Island.
One constable said that he and his family were evacuated by the local authorities to a much sturdier schoolhouse a few yards further inland. But constable Airam said no one came to evacuate them. Around 0600, as the storm began to intensify noticeably, he stepped out of his wooden home to watch the waves breaking a few yards away. Within seconds, a large wave developed and rushed toward him. The wall of water nearly knocked him to the ground, then poured into his home.
Airam ran inside, got his family, and together they quickly made their way to the center of the narrow island. He turned around just at the moment a wave came crashing down on his home, knocking it flat and sweeping it away.
Thirty percent of the homes on Ebeye were destroyed and fifty percent received heavy damage, leaving 3,500 people without shelter. Schools, churches and Kwajalein Atoll government buildings were utilized as temporary housing.
In addition to the one man who died while trying to save his roof, a baby drowned when a wave destroyed the house she was staying in. Roy became a typhoon after leaving Kwaj, a category 4 with winds of 135 miles per hour. If it had hit Kwaj with that much force, both Kwajalein Island and Ebeye would have been inundated with a massive tidal wave. Many of the 5,000 workers on Kwaj would have died, with the exception of those in the strong shelter on Mt. Olympus. Practically all of the 10,000 people on Ebeye would have died as the twenty foot plus tidal wave swept the island clean.
A couple of days later I heard something unusual. One of the Americans who volunteered to help with the cleanup on Ebeye told me that right after the storm cleared out, local residents made a run on Robert Reimers Department Store and bought out all of the television sets and other entertainment devices.
I asked Tulensa if this was true. He smiled and said yes. In fact, he had lost a TV, VCR, stereo and two Nikon 35 mm cameras – all of which he must replace.
A few days later the Marshallese began reporting for work – wearing donated pants that sometimes were too long or short or baggy and shoes that were four sizes too big. But they took it in stride.
It wasn’t that the storm didn’t affect them. Everyone seemed subdued, maybe shell-shocked is the word. But they carried on, doing what they normally do day after day on Kwaj.
Janice, a young woman who works behind the counter at the dry cleaners, said she had lost all of her personnel belongings when the house she was sharing was destroyed by waves. I asked her if she needed anything and she said no, another family had taken her in and everything would work out.
Filed under: Almost Paradise Volume 2
Trackback Uri
