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NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico: One person was killed as tropical depression
Dolly dumped rain over Texas and Mexico on Thursday 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 on the US side were still without power, and that 3,000 people
were in temporary shelters.
But Dolly failed to cause any breach in south
Texas levees, as some authorities had feared.
In 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.
Also near the US border, Dolly’s winds 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 25
miles per hour (40 kilometers per hour) by 0300 GMT hours after it
was downgraded to a tropical depression, according to the US
National Hurricane Center.
Dolly was nevertheless expected to leave eight
to 12 inches of rain over parts of south Texas and northeast Mexico,
the center said, adding that the rain was “very likely to cause
widespread flooding.”
“Dolly is expected to move west northwest
along the Texas-Mexico border,” it warned.
“Additional three-to five-inch rainfall
amounts are possible over south Texas and northeastern Mexico over
the next 24 hours. The higher terrain of northeastern Mexico could
receive heavier totals. This event will likely cause widespread
flooding.”
-- AFP
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