|
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas: Hurricane
Dolly was downgraded to a tropical storm Wednesday after it tore
into Texas with 160 kilometer per hour winds and left 250,000 people
without drinking water in Mexico.
The storm made
landfall at South Padre Island, Texas, at midday (1700 GMT) as a
category two hurricane, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said,
with the resort island practically submerged under the storm surge.
But Dolly lost
some punch as it interacted with the cooler landmass after leaving
the Gulf of Mexico. It was to continue weakening as it moves further
inland at about 11 kilometers per hour, the NHC reported.
By 0600 GMT
Thursday, Dolly’s sustained winds fell to 95 kilometers per hour
as it lumbered to the northwest 120 kilometers from the Texas border
town of Brownsville.
The
“slow-moving Dolly [was] dumping torrential rains on south
Texas,” the NHC said, noting that Dolly is expected to continue
weakening as it moves farther inland.”
As pounding rain
and strong winds battered the US-Mexico coast, authorities worried
whether levees could sustain the floodwaters.
Bracing for as
many as 40 centimeters of rain, residents boarded up windows and
piled up sandbags and thousands fled for safer ground.
In Matamoros,
Mexico, 60 kilometers south of South Padre Island, Dolly’s winds
damaged the city’s main water treatment plant, leaving half of the
500,000 inhabitants without drinking water, while heavy rain
triggered extensive flooding, local officials said.
Texas Governor
Rick Perry issued disaster declarations in 14 counties across the
southern portion of the state, and hundreds of National Guard troops
and other emergency crews were deployed in advance of the storm.
White House
Spokeswoman Dana Perino said federal authorities were helping with
hurricane preparations.
“We’ve been
identifying resources and pre-positioning supplies in case they are
needed after the landfall,” she told reporters in Washington.
As the hurricane
reached land, the NHC warned that isolated tornadoes could hit south
Texas and there could be “widespread flooding across portions of
south Texas and northeast Mexico.”
As Dolly weakened
over southern Texas, hurricane warnings were replaced by tropical
storm warnings in many areas north and south of the US-Mexico
border.
Initial damage
estimates from the storm by risk-modeling service provider AIR
Worldwide Corp. varied between $300 million and $1.2 billion in the
United States, and less than a quarter of those amounts in Mexico.
“The
considerable uncertainty in the loss estimates is due to Dolly’s
slow forward motion, its significant precipitation and the
uncertainty in its future track as it makes its way inland,” AIR
Worldwide said in a statement.
Authorities
called for the evacuation of more than 23,000 people from coastal
areas in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Gov. Eugenio Hernandez
said.
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.
About 35 million
people live in the most hurricane-prone US region, the southeastern
coastline running from the states of North Carolina to Texas,
according to the US Census Bureau
---AFP
|
