Rota Mayor Aubry Hocog said the majority of homes on Rota were damaged or destroyed following Super Typhoon Bavi's direct hit to the island on July 6, 2026. (Office of the Mayor of Rota)
Super Typhoon Bavi battered the small Pacific island of Rota, leaving its 2,000 residents without power or running water, according to the island’s mayor on Tuesday.
Bavi made a direct hit as a Category 5-equivalent storm Monday morning on the 33-square-mile island in the Northern Marianas, bringing heavy downpours and devastating 180 mph winds.
The storm damaged the island in “every aspect,” Mayor Aubry Hocog told Stars and Stripes by phone Tuesday afternoon.
“Our public facilities, our government, our assets, our private residences and then even our port of entries — our airport and seaport — they have undergone damage,” she said.
Hocog on Tuesday afternoon said the island had tapped into a reservoir to provide water.
The storm caused no deaths, and no missing were reported as of Tuesday afternoon, although two residents were injured, according to Auston Reyes, a spokesman for the mayor’s operations center. Dozens of people on Rota were in shelters Tuesday, he said.
Employes with the Office of the Mayor of Rota surveyed damaged homes, buildings and other areas on July 7, 2026, following a direct hit from Super Typhoon Bavi the previous morning. (Office of the Mayor of Rota)
Super Typhoon Bavi slammed directly into Rota on July 6, 2026, with maximum sustained winds at 180 mph making it a Category 5-equivalent storm. (Office of the Mayor of Rota)
Bavi weakened to a Category 4-equivalent storm on Tuesday. It was about 420 miles west of the island and on track for Taiwan and the westernmost Nansei Islands of Japan.
Tinian and Saipan northeast of Rota, and Guam to the southwest fared better.
Guam Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero on Facebook posts Tuesday said most buildings survived the storm unscathed and roads were mostly clear. Videos shot along Guam beaches showed debris washed ashore and blocking some roads.
By 3 p.m. Tuesday, 17% of the power system load on Guam was restored, according to a Guam Joint Information Center bulletin. Of 120 water wells, 68 were online.
On Saipan and Tinian, workers hoped to restore power, water and wastewater within 24 hours, the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. said in a 3 p.m. post to its Facebook page. Rota’s utilities were still being assessed, it said.
Joint Region Marianas, which manages all Defense Department installations on Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, moved to “all-clear” status — Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness 4 — at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Joint Information Center.
Initial assessments found “no reports of significant damage to critical infrastructure or injuries to personnel resulting from the storm,” Joint Region Marianas spokeswoman Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kristina Wiedemann said in a Tuesday email.
“Recovery operations remain focused on clearing debris, assessing facilities, restoring services, and returning installations to normal operations as conditions safely allow,” she wrote.
Rota’s government plans an official survey on Wednesday, but the “majority of homes,” including concrete buildings, were affected and nearly everyone on the island experienced some level of flooding, Hocog said.
The island less than two months ago weathered Super Typhoon Sinlaku and Super Typhoon Mawar in 2023.
“We’ve gone through Sinlaku, we’ve gone through Mawar, but they didn’t affect our island the way Bavi did,” Hocog said.
Department of Public Works employees were working to clear Rota’s major highways and restore water, and the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has set up a water filling station in Sinapalo.
Hocog said Rota is in touch with the governments of Guam, the Northern Marianas and the U.S., the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a variety of other organizations and nonprofits.
“They’ve all reached out to us to see how they can help us,” she said.
She also implored the island’s community to maintain hope and faith.
“I think by coming together as a community, being kind and just respectful, and just being there to support each other, you know, will definitely make the process a lot easier,” she said.
