Damage from Super Typhoon Yutu in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. (Jose Mafnas) Typhoon Yutu’s 180 mph winds overturned cars, knocked down hundreds of power poles and left an island of thousands without a medical center — and another without an airport. Buildings were reduced to haphazard piles of tin and wood, and if it wasn’t made of concrete, one resident said, it was probably wiped out by the most powerful tropical cyclone to hit any part of the United States since 1935. Yutu spent hours thrashing the small islands of Saipan and Tinian, the most populous part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory in the Pacific, early Thursday morning local time. Residents of the islands, which are north of Guam, another U.S. territory, are accustomed to typhoons but quickly attested that this was the worst they had seen. Yutu’s gigantic eye enveloped much of […]