The Social Effects of Typhoon Ophelia (1960) on Ulithi

Lessa, William A. (1964). "The Social Effects of Typhoon Ophelia (1960) on Ulithi". Micronesica. 1: 1–47. ISSN 0026-279 .

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Abstract: On November 30, 1960, Typhoon Ophelia struck Ulithi, an atoll in the :southwest Pacific, leaving the island groups a mass of devastation. It was the worst tropical cyclone to strike the atoll since 1907, when a similar catastrophe laid waste the land,1 but Ophelia differed from this earlier typhoon in being perhaps less intense in surface wind speed and much more violent in the wave action it churned up, resulting in severe damage to nearly all beaches and inundation of the interior of Falalop Island. Moreover, over half a century of .change had rendered the human circumstances different. A disaster of this kind has certain special conditions. When a rotary storm strikes a native community on a small island there is little recourse to defensive measures and no possibility of escape, and there is the danger of unlimited destruction. Immediate help from external sources is not forthcoming and in any event is not available for preventing destruction. The inhabitants have minimal control over the situation. Another special condition is that a typhoon involves a relatively short period of intense impact, followed by a post-impact period of long duration. The enduring effects of this particular typhoon lie in the impetus it gave to changes inherent in the acculturative situation. Had the people of Ulithi not hitherto been drawn into the world orbit, with inevitable consequences to its economy, political system, religion , and values , the storm would merely have created temporary dislocations without changing the modus vivendi. True, there would have been a severe decimation of the population due to the sudden loss of available foodstuffs, but in the precontact setting the typhoon would have been absorbed without appreciably changing the nature of the society or the culture.

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