ROTA — Dre San Nicolas steered past downed wooden power poles, sand-covered pavement and a coastline stripped bare, pointing out what Super Typhoon Bavi took and what it could not touch on the drive from the airport in Sinapalo down to Songsong village.
“Rota is devastated, I’ll say,” the 25-year-old Star Marianas Air employee said in an interview with NMI News Service during the drive Friday.
San Nicolas said the storm caught him off guard by arriving in daylight. “I thought it would just pass by at night,” he said. “It came in like it hit us really hard in the morning… around seven, around eight.”
At his home in Songsong, the wind pushed his window-type air conditioner into the house. He stood on a chair and held it in place for about an hour until the eye passed overhead and he could secure it properly. His two-year-old daughter slept through the storm. The family’s back kitchen, where he cooked and gathered with friends, is gone.
“Still got a lot of cleaning to do, but I’ll do that my off days,” he said.
Power has been out since CUC shut off the grid ahead of the storm Sunday, San Nicolas said, and water had returned to his area just the day before. He said he has heard the island might be without power for two to three months, a figure he hopes proves wrong. CUC has issued no restoration timeline; the utility’s latest situation report counts 117 damaged wooden poles, 11 leaning poles and 63 damaged transformers on Rota, with the concrete mainline along the airport corridor intact.
San Nicolas said he was glad the island’s concrete poles held. “If it was all wooden, I’ll say a hundred percent” would be down, he said.
Most stores are running on generators, he said. Gas is limited and expensive at $7.49 per gallon, a burden for families running generators and inverters. Rota Resort remains closed as it has been for years, while Coral Gardens and Hotel Valentino are still operating, he said.
The biggest problem, San Nicolas said, is communication. “Once you reach Sinapalo, there’s no service there. You can’t make calls, you can’t receive calls… no internet connection as well,” he said, adding that service in Songsong fluctuates. He bought a generator so his family has power when he takes the vehicle and its inverter to work. “I’m not worried about myself,” he said. “I’m just thinking of my daughter.”
Along the drive, CUC crews were clearing downed poles and lines, including workers back from Tinian and Water Division personnel flown in from Saipan. Roads that days earlier forced drivers to weave between lanes and onto the grass are opening up, he said. Midway through the drive, San Nicolas stopped to drop off food at the mayor’s office.
Born in Guam in 2000, San Nicolas moved to Rota as a toddler, grew up in Sinapalo and returned for good in 2014 after two years away. He bought a house in Songsong at the beginning of this year and was renovating it when Bavi hit.
“Home is home. There’s no place like home,” he said.
His parents and grandparents told him stories of a Rota that was “very prosperous” in decades past. Asked how he copes with seeing the island’s beauty battered, he said his mind stays on his priorities.
“These things will always be here forever anyways,” he said. “The beach will never disappear. It’s always going to be here.”
