SAIPAN – For Guam Power Authority engineers Nanette Guerrero Alger and John Duenas, Saipan has been home for a month.
The pair arrived April 25 as part of GPA’s advance team sent to assess the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation’s power system and shape the Super Typhoon Sinlaku recovery plan, Thomas Alger said in a submission to NMI News Service.
Alger, who is Nanette’s husband, said the two engineers are not scheduled to return to Guam until the GPA mission to restore Saipan’s power is accomplished. The mission has crossed the one-month mark.
Nanette Guerrero Alger is an Engineering Supervisor at GPA. Duenas is an Engineer III. Both have been working alongside CUC crews and contractors on a power system that took heavy damage in the storm.
Nanette spent her birthday on May 7 on the mission, Alger said.
“I feel these two deserve recognition for sacrificing time away from their families,” Alger said.
Sister-island mutual aid has been a quiet through-line of the Sinlaku recovery, from GPA’s engineering and line crews to Guam-based logistics support running through Andersen Air Force Base. The federal post-disaster framework allows neighboring U.S. utilities to deploy across jurisdictional lines, and GPA has done so before, including during Super Typhoon Yutu in 2018 and Super Typhoon Soudelor in 2015.
NMI News Service’s Show Us the Good Out There series highlights people across the Marianas, and the Marianas diaspora, lifting each other up. Submissions can be sent to NMI News Service.