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Winds Lash, Levees Hold

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The New York Times

Published: July 24, 2008

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Hurricane Dolly rolled into south Texas and northern Mexico on Wednesday, deluging the Rio Grande Valley with rain, knocking out power to tens of thousands of people and ripping roofs off resorts on South Padre Island.

But the worst fears of local officials did not materialize. The levees along the Rio Grande held and no major flooding was reported, state and local officials said. The brunt of the storm surge did not flow up the river.

"The levees are holding up just fine, and the river level hasn't risen too much," said Johnny Cavazos, the emergency management coordinator for Cameron County, at the state's southern tip. "We got lucky."

Some officials still worried about the enormous amount of rain the storm would dump - up to 20 inches in some places - which could swell the river and breach levees in the coming days.

The storm, the first to affect the U.S. mainland this year, first raked across South Padre Island, a tourist resort, in the early afternoon. A few hours later, it hit the coast about 30 miles north of Port Isabel, churning inland and losing power slowly, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

When the hurricane touched land, winds at the center were clocked at 100 mph, making it a Category 2 storm, though it was downgraded to Category 1 when winds slowed to 95 mph.

On the resort island, many roofs were torn off, trees toppled, signs blown down and windows smashed, The Associated Press reported. Roads were strewn with branches, tree trunks, power poles and street lights.

A 17-year-old boy was seriously injured on South Padre Island after he was blown from the seventh-floor balcony of the Lighthouse Condominiums, said Dan Quandt, a spokesman for the island's government. The boy suffered a broken leg, a smashed hip and a head injury, but survived the fall. "He should buy a lottery ticket," Quandt said.

In the border town of Brownsville, the high winds knocked out power and toppled oaks around the county courthouse and elsewhere. Winds howled and trees danced crazily under leaden skies. Rain whipped sideways through the tropical air.

The storm destroyed several important power lines, including a line running into Brownsville, city officials said. More than 80,000 people in four counties were left without power, crippling refrigeration systems and, in Brownsville, the sewage system. An official for the American Electric Power utility said line crews would work to restore power as soon as the storm cleared, but it could take two or three days.

Gov. Rick Perry asked the White House to declare the affected counties a federal disaster area.

Late in the afternoon, state search-and-rescue teams in helicopters searched poor neighborhoods known as colonias in low-lying areas along the Rio Grande, many of which lack basic services. The teams reported no heavy flooding, nor did they rescue anyone, Perry said.

Local officials said it might be impossible to assess the full extent of the wreckage the storm caused until this afternoon, but the worst damage appeared focused on South Padre Island, Port Isabel and in Rio Hondo, where flooding forced people taking shelter in a high school to the second floor.

More than 4,000 people, mostly from low-lying regions along the river and the coast, crowded into schools for shelter. Eight hundred milled through the halls or lay sleeping on blankets at the Homer Hanna High School here. Babies crawled across the floor and boys played tag in the hallways while rain hammered the outside of the building.

"The apartments where we live are not very good, and they are close to the river," said Viviano Alanez, 82, who arrived at the high school at 9 p.m. Tuesday. "Here we are safe."

School buses carried hundreds of evacuees away from South Padre Island, where the storm surge was expected to be 6 to 8 feet above the high tide line, and Port Isabel on the coast. They were taken to a high school farther inland in San Benito. But some hardy souls stayed on. Some sheltered in a convention center that was damaged by the storm, officials said.

The storm is the first hurricane to hit the mainland since Humberto came ashore in south Texas last September. In the Gulf of Mexico, Shell Oil evacuated workers from oil rigs, but said it didn't expect production to be affected. It also secured wells and shut down production in the Rio Grande Valley, where it primarily deals in natural gas.

Mexico's state-run oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, said it had evacuated 66 workers from an oil platform off the coast of the port city of Tampico. Thousands of people in shoddy housing fled to government shelters, Mexican newspapers reported. Mexican soldiers made a daring rescue of people trapped in a flood near the mouth of the Rio Grande, using an inflatable raft to rescue a family from its home.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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