HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — James Davis sat in line outside the Yigo Shell Guam gas station for 14 hours on Sunday.
“I was there in the Shell line at 3 a.m. … I made it, but they only opened up at 5 p.m. because the tankers came at 4 p.m.,” he said, as he sat in line, again, outside the station Monday morning.
Davis drives forward a few feet in his SUV when the line progresses, then cuts the power to his engine when things slow down again. He said he thought he was done with waiting for gas, but took a chance when he observed a relatively quickly moving line outside the station, and loaded up with jerrycans for his generator and his mother-in-law’s car.
“I still haven’t cleaned my yard, bro, because I’ve been lining up for fuel,” Davis said. “Once I settle down, then I’ll start working on my yard.”
Trees he planted in the aftermath of Supertyphoon Pongsona over 20 years ago have fallen and need to be cut down, uprooted and piled up.
The 42-year-old Yigo resident said he saw a man earlier berating a Shell employee who told the man he couldn’t fill up all 10 of the gas cans he brought. But Davis said the long lines, power outages and nonfunctional ATMs don’t frustrate him.
“I’m just thankful that we have a roof on our house,” he said. “Some people have no roof. My friend has no … roof (on) his house. I told him, ‘If you need anything, let me know.”
Napoleon Gonzales, 72, was sitting just a few car spaces ahead of Davis and felt the same about the seemingly high tension among residents in the aftermath of Typhoon Mawar.
“Be patient. You can’t do anything. This thing’s going to affect us all,” the Yigo resident advised.
“It’s supposed to be getting better, but it’s getting worse. No water, no power, and people are getting desperate.”
‘I saw someone else doing it’
A little further south along Route 1, Latte Heights resident Emerson Castrence pulled over by the Dededo Dog Park with a piece of rubber hose and a trunk full of five-gallon buckets and jugs.
“I saw someone else doing it,” said the 48-year-old as he filled his containers with water from a spigot normally intended to help canines cool off in the heat.
Castrence said he had already stopped at a store to get drinking water, but the dog park was supplying his family with water to use for showers. “No water, no power, (and no) service also for our phones” at home, he said.
Unlike Davis, the slow pace of storm recovery upset him.
“I don’t even see (the Guam Power Authority) fixing the lines,” he said. “I don’t know where the trucks are. I don’t see anything.”
Like many others, Castrence said he and his family weren’t expecting Mawar to strike the island as hard as it did. He said he got off work early in the afternoon as it approached Wednesday, and was outside reinforcing his house and his roof as the winds kicked up.
After filling up his water buckets, Castrence said his next priority was to get a small generator running at his house. He said he hasn’t cranked the thing up since Pongsona.
‘It’s actually pretty scary’
Meanwhile, at the Home Depot in Tamuning, 24-year-old Nicholas Abrenilla scratched his head at the half-empty shelves.
Abrenilla came looking for screens and fasteners to keep mosquitos out of his home, where the doors and windows were open in hopes of catching a breeze. He said he also needed something to patch a flat tire on his sister’s car, and tools for the family of another sister who had just given birth.
“They don’t have the thick machetes, they don’t have axes or hatchets anymore. All they have left would be like the heavier stuff, but I don’t want to pay for (it),” Abrenilla said in frustration, before giving up and leaving the store.
Driving to check the next hardware store wasn’t an exciting prospect, he said.
Between his smashed rear windshield and tail light and the bad behavior out on the road, he said, “It’s actually pretty scary.”
“It’s supposed to be getting better, but it’s getting worse. No water, no power, and people are getting desperate.”
Latte Heights resident Emerson Castrence fills several water containers for his family using a spigot Monday, May 29, 2023, at the Dededo Dog Park.
