3 Dead, 12 Missing, Hundreds of Homes Destroyed

3 dead after record storms in Texas, Oklahoma; 12 missing in one county

By Ben Brumfield, CNN
Updated 1:42 PM ET, Mon May 25, 2015

(CNN)Record-setting rains left officials in Texas and Oklahoma scrambling to assess the scope of the damage and destruction Monday as an emergency coordinator told reporters that a dozen people were missing in one county.

The 12 people missing in Hays County, Texas, come from families who had gathered for the long weekend, said Ken Bell, emergency coordinator for San Marcos, one of the cities hardest hit by the storms and flooding.

The group likely includes children, Bell said.

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A day after severe weather left three people dead and washed away hundreds of homes in Texas and Oklahoma, the storms are easing up.

But it doesn't mean the threat is gone.

The torrents that those storms dumped are still too much for river and creek banks to contain, and runoff was peaking early Monday, threatening continued flooding, the National Weather Service warned.

And rain relief is not coming to everyone. Forecasters warned that with the ground already saturated, even a small amount of new rain could have devastating consequences.

"Only an inch or two of rainfall could quickly lead to more flash flooding concerns," the weather service said.

The destruction and threat of more inclement weather prompted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to add 24 counties to the 13 already under an emergency disaster declaration, allowing the state to use all the resources "reasonably necessary to cope with this disaster."

Forecasts call for thunderstorms, hail, high winds, flash flooding, river flooding and tornadoes this week, the governor's statement said.

State issues severe weather tips

Texas homes wiped away

In Hays County near Austin, up to 400 homes have washed away.

"We do have whole streets that have maybe one or two houses left on them, and the rest are just slabs," said Kharley Smith, emergency management coordinator.

More than 1,000 more homes were damaged, and waters washed two main bridges away in Hays.

Thunderstorms could dump 1 to 3 more inches of rain there Monday -- 5 inches in isolated areas, the weather service said.

While flood warnings and watches were winding down in most places overnight, a new flood watch loomed from Monday into early Tuesday for Hays County.

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Powerful flood sweeps SUV away 02:03

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One person was confirmed dead in San Marcos, and bad weather hindered the search for missing people Sunday. Rescuers used helicopters to heave stranded residents off the rooftops of buildings surrounded by flood lakes, where normally fields stand.

The Blanco River, which flows through San Marcos, shot past its previous flood record of 33.3 feet to 40.21 feet late Saturday.

Hours earlier, it ran just over 5 feet deep, according to weather service data. Fortunately, its floodwaters should make a rapid retreat.

Nearly 200 miles northeast of Hays County, near Houston, an area of about 400 homes around Louis Creek Dam is under mandatory evacuation. The dam has not breached, but workers continue to pack soil on it.

Oklahoma firefighter drowned

In neighboring Oklahoma, two people died.

On Saturday, a woman in Tulsa died after her car hydroplaned. In the nearby town of Claremore, a firefighter got swept into a storm drain while attempting a high-water rescue Sunday.

There, water levels in creeks usually waste-deep raged up two dozen feet or more over the weekend. Markers signifying moderate to major river flooding dotted the weather map, particularly along the border with Texas.

The weekend deluges caused Oklahoma City to break its all-time rainfall record for any single month. But much of Oklahoma got a rain break Sunday. Fog wafted through Tulsa, and on Monday, there was a chance of thunderstorms there.

A flood watch is on from the southern Plains to the Gulf of Mexico. The heavier rains are moving east, where they are sending some rivers and creeks over their banks.

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Mon May 25, 2015 11:52am EDT

Tornado kills 10 in Mexican city on border with Texas: mayor

At least 10 people died on Monday morning after a tornado hit Ciudad Acuna, a Mexican city on the border with Texas, Mayor Evaristo Lenin Perez said.

The whirlwind damaged hundreds of concrete buildings, knocking down walls and ceilings, as well as wrecking vehicles in the city, Perez said.

"Most of the dead are people who were outside, not people who were inside their homes," he said.

​http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/25/us-mexico-tornado-idUSKBN0OA14V20150525

Mexico Border City Tornado Leaves 13 Dead, 230 Injured

A tornado raged through a city on the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, destroying homes, flinging cars like matchsticks and ripping an infant from a mother's arms. At least 13 people were killed and more than 200 injured, authorities said.

The twister struck not long after daybreak — around the time buses were preparing to take children to school — in Ciudad Acuna, a city of 125,000 across from Del Rio, Texas, said Victor Zamora, interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila.

"It hit an area of about seven blocks," Zamora said, describing the neighborhood as "devastated."

The head of Mexico's national civil defense agency, Luis Felipe Puente, told local media that 230 people had been injured and that shelters are being set up.

Rescue workers began digging through the rubble of damaged homes in a race to find more victims.

The twister destroyed homes, upended cars and ripped an infant in a baby carrier from its mother's arms. The child is missing.

Photos from the scene showed cars with their hoods ripped off, resting upended against single-story houses. One car's frame was bent around the gate of a house. A bus was seen flipped and crumpled on a roadway. One car's frame was literally bent around the gate of a house. A bus was seen flipped and crumpled on a roadway.

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Residents stand outside their damaged house after a tornado hit the town of Ciudad Acuna, state of Coahuila, May 25, 2015.

At least 11 people died on Monday morning after a powerful tornado ripped through the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Acuna, destroying dozens of homes and wrecking cars, Mayor Evaristo Lenin Perez said. An estimated 180 people were injured in the whirlwind, which damaged as many as 350 homes, knocking down walls and ceilings, and slammed into vehicles in the city that lies across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, Texas, officials said.

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At Least 18 Die After Storms in Texas and Oklahoma

BY ERIN MCCLAM AND ELISHA FIELDSTADT

The death toll from Texas flooding continued to climb on Tuesday, as many areas remained inaccessible and authorities warned of more trouble to come.

At least 11 people were killed in Texas, four of them in Houston. Authorities believe one of the dead might be one of three people who went missing after tumbling from a capsized boat, but that has not been confirmed, authorities said Tuesday.

Seven people in Oklahoma died in flooding and storms since Friday, authorities said.

In Hays County, about 180 miles west of Houston, officials said two people were dead, and 13 were missing, officials said.

That included eight people staying together in a vacation home in Wimberley, which was swept off its stilts by a tsunami-like "wall of water" that roared down the Blanco River over the weekend following a wave of torrential rain, Hays County Commissioner Will Conley said.

Search-and-rescue operations were continuing, on land and from air, across a landscape where centuries-old trees had been ripped away by the 44-foot storm surge. "It looks like a savannah," Conley said.

Seventy homes were destroyed, and another 1,400 properties were damaged. If not for a phone notification system, "God knows how many people we would have lost," Conley said.

In Houston, officials believe the number of severely damaged homes could reach 4,000.

Among the confirmed dead in Texas were a 14-year-old boy found inside a storm drain in Desoto, and Alyssa Ramirez, 18, a homecoming queen who was driving home from her prom in Devine when floodwaters swept her car off the road.

Two victims in Houston were under or in submerged cars, and a third involved a capsized boat, officials said. The body of a man was also found in a vehicle in Williamson County, north of Austin, authorities said.

Another seven people were killed in storms and flooding in Oklahoma from Friday to Monday, including a Claremore firefighter who died during a water rescue, and a 33-year-old woman who died in a storm-related traffic crash in Tulsa.

A 48-year-old woman was killed Monday after a tornado struck Bryan County, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said. A total of 11 people have died in the state due to storms since May 5, the department said.

While officials continued searching for victims, meteorologists said the region should brace for more severe thunderstorms and tornadoes that could batter the south-central United States, including Texas and Oklahoma, and trigger more flash flooding.

A large swath of the country, from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, remained under threat of violent storms.

In Houston, a city bisected by small rivers, more than 80,000 people were without power and the flood waters closed roads including Interstate 10 and Interstate 45.

Houston Intercontinental Airport smashed its all-time record for most rainfall in one day on Monday — its 4.34 inches almost doubling the previous milestone set in 1946.

"The rain just kept coming, and coming, and coming," said Ashley Aivles, a 25-year-old call center worker who struggled to make it back to her home in a Houston suburb early Tuesday.

PHOTOS: Widespread Flooding Hits Texas

Around 200 basketball fans were trapped inside the city's Toyota Center at 4 a.m. local time (5 a.m. ET), having watched the Houston Rockets' playoff win over the Golden State Warriors.

All Houston METRO rail and bus services were canceled until the flood waters receded and conditions were deemed safe by the city's Office of Emergency Management, the transportation service announced at 4:20 a.m. local time (5:20 a.m. ET).

An unknown number of people were also stranded in Houston's The Galleria mall, after parts of the building and the surrounding streets were drenched by the deluge.

But there was reason for optimism there, as water levels in the city's bayou system declined on Tuesday, Parker said.

Provided no more rain hits the city in the next 24 hours, all the bayous will return to their normal levels, she said.

Texas, Oklahoma and southwestern Kansas have been experiencing extreme drought conditions for the past five years. That left the soil "like concrete," which typically exacerbates flooding conditions, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska.

But the latest round of flooding in Texas and Oklahoma can be attributed to sustained rainfall, including the equivalent of 12 to 16 inches above normal falling in the past 30 days, Svoboda said.

"The soil is too full. It's oversaturated with water," he said. "There's been too much, too soon, after you've had so little for such a long period of time."

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