Dolly dwindles but flood threat still looms in Texas, Mexico
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AFP) — One person was killed as tropical depression Dolly dumped rain over Texas and Mexico on Friday after pummeling the coast as a hurricane and stirring up floods.
The Gulf of Mexico's first hurricane of 2008 ripped off rooftops, shattered windows, toppled trees and power lines and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated damage.
Bill Bryan, an Energy Department deputy assistant secretary, told CNN television 236,000 people in the area hit just over the border on the US side were still without power, and that 3,000 people were in temporary shelters.
American Electric Power spokesman Andy Heines told The Brownsville Herald that outages from the hurricane topped expectations on the US side.
"What nobody could predict is that (Dolly) would slow right before landfall," he told the daily. But Dolly failed to cause any breach in south Texas levees, as some authorities had feared.
In northeastern Mexico, Dolly caused extensive flooding in the border city of Matamoros, where tens of thousands of people lacked electricity and drinking water. One person was fatally electrocuted, officials said.
Dolly's winds also damaged Nuevo Laredo's main water treatment plant, leaving half of its 500,000 inhabitants without drinking water.
The storm's sustained winds deflated to 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) by 0900 GMT Friday, hours after it was downgraded to a tropical depression, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
"Dolly is expected to continue to move west northwest along the Texas/Mexico border during Friday. Rainfall amounts of 1 to 3 inches (2.5-7.6 cm) are possible over southwest Texas and northeastern Mexico with isolated heavier totals possible over the higher terrain of northeastern Mexico during the next 24 hours. These rains may produce flash flooding," the NHC warned.
Dolly slammed into the Texas-Mexico border region Wednesday as a category two hurricane with 100 mph (160 kph) winds.
The storm dumped heavy rain, toppled trees and downed power lines. A 17-year-old boy broke several bones when the gusts knocked him out of a seven-story building, US media reported.
Texas Governor Rick Perry declared a disaster situation in 15 counties across the southern portion of the state, deploying hundreds of National Guard troops and other emergency crews, local media said.
The river level in Brownsville, Texas rose steadily but the older levees in the Rio Grande Valley withstood the waters, after some officials had voiced concern that the levees could be overwhelmed.
Due to dangers posed by the continuing rain, dangling power lines and high waters in some parts of south Texas, authorities urged residents to limit their activities as much as possible.
Initial damage estimates from the storm by risk-modeling service provider AIR Worldwide Corporation varied between 300 million and 1.2 billion dollars in the United States, and less than a quarter of those amounts in Mexico.
The NHC has forecast an especially active 2008 weather season, saying there could be up to nine hurricanes and 12 tropical storms in the Atlantic region. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through the end of November.
