GUAM — Women who are 36 weeks pregnant or further along, and high-risk mothers from 24 weeks, have been told to move into Guam Memorial Hospital Authority before Typhoon Champi arrives, and to come without an escort, a support person, children or pets. Guam Homeland Security said in a release posted at 10 p.m. Friday, Guam time, that the hospital expects intake to begin on Saturday morning and will announce the exact time, and that mothers should not turn up before then.
The storm explains the urgency. Guam Homeland Security said on Saturday morning, local time, that Champi had become a typhoon. At 7 a.m. its center was about 340 miles east-southeast of the island, moving west-northwest at 15 mph with winds of 85 mph, and a Typhoon Warning covers Guam and Rota. The forecast track now brings the storm just south of Guam as a Category 3 typhoon, its release said, and forecasts can change.
Timing is the immediate problem. Homeland Security expects damaging winds of 39 mph or more from as early as 8 p.m. Saturday and typhoon-force winds of 74 mph or more from as early as 5 a.m. Sunday. Five school shelters were set to open at 10 a.m. Saturday with a combined capacity of 1,964 people. That is a stated maximum, not an estimate of how many will come.
The forecast has shifted within a day. A Friday morning advisory from Guam Homeland Security had Champi passing “very near, or over, Guam late Sunday morning as a Category 2 typhoon,” with up to 6 to 12 inches of rain, a flood watch for Guam, Rota, Tinian and Saipan, and surf that could become “dangerous and life-threatening at 15 to 20 feet Sunday morning.” The same advisory warned that rapid intensification could bring a stronger typhoon, and by Saturday the forecast category had risen by one.
Track matters as much as category. The Friday advisory said the path could still shift north or south, and the Saturday release repeated that forecasts can change. A pass to the south of the island would put Guam on a different side of the storm than a pass over it, and neither document says what that means for the island’s west coast.
The islands have had little time to recover. Super Typhoon Sinlaku destroyed more than 7,000 homes and displaced 13,000 people across the Northern Mariana Islands and Micronesia in April, TEH reported in June, and thousands of disaster claims were still being processed two months later.
The National Weather Service office in Guam invited residents to a Facebook Live on Champi at 3:30 p.m. Friday, it said on X.
The Guam Homeland Security release on the hospital plan does not say whether the bar on support persons holds if a woman goes into labor during the storm, or how many mothers the designated area can take.
