HPR has been looking across the Pacific as neighbors deal with damage from Super Typhoon Sinlaku, which hit the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas last month.
Federal agencies and the military have been assisting with the recovery on Saipan, Tinian, Rota, Guam, and, to some extent, the Federated States of Micronesia.
The Conversation connected with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday afternoon.
The unit is based on Oʻahu, but members were dispatched to Guam, anticipating the area to be hard hit.
Lt. Col. Adrian Biggerstaff saw the devastation firsthand. He expects it will take until mid-summer before his team can return to Hawaiʻi, as it assists the hardest hit area of Saipan.
"We staged our team in Guam as the storm was coming through, not knowing where the storm would hit, and as we gained assurance that it was in CNMI (Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands), not Guam, we then pushed that team into Saipan, and we immediately started pulling in generators days after the storm," Biggerstaff said.
He told HPR that teams have installed 124 generators and produced 3.3 gigawatt-hours of power to the community — an amount equivalent to about 3.3 million smartphone charges.
They have also assessed nearly 190 locations that need generators and are working on getting temporary, larger generators on the island.
"We have other generation capabilities coming up over the coming weeks to hopefully get them back to the original power, and while we do this, they're improving and expanding the grid with repairs to be able to have the load to receive that power and get the whole community back to their pre-storm state," Biggerstaff said.
This story aired on The Conversation on May 18, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
