Levees spared as Dolly belts, drenches S. Texas

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Hurricane Dolly slammed ashore and then loitered over deep south Texas as a tropical storm, dumping as much as a foot of rain in places and ripping roofs off buildings with 100 mph winds.

Emergency managers waited for Dolly to move on late into the night Wednesday and hoped to begin assessing the storm's damage today even as they began to rescue people from flooded or damaged homes.

Dolly had weakened to a tropical storm by 10 p.m. CDT Wednesday after hitting South Padre Island around midday as a Category 2 hurricane. But the storm drenched south Texas as it crept westward at an excruciating 7 mph into the evening. The National Weather Service expected Dolly to weaken to a tropical depression, turn to the northwest and accelerate slightly today.

By 1 a.m. today, the tropical storm was centered about 75 miles northwest of Brownsville with maximum sustained winds that had dropped to about 60 mph.

Still the danger had not passed as power lines hung across streets and water surrounded neighborhoods. Tony Pena, Hidalgo County emergency management coordinator, urged residents to stay at home "unless it's life or death."

While the rain set records in Brownsville's Cameron County — ranging from 6 to 12 inches with another 3 to 7 expected overnight — it did not appear to pose the threat to the Rio Grande's levees that had been feared.

The river rose steadily through the day in Brownsville, but did not reach flood stage.

"We're not experiencing any issues with the levees right now," Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, said late Wednesday. "The water is just not high enough."

But the torrential rains and fierce winds that lasted much of the day in south Texas still caught some by surprise.

By Wednesday afternoon, the community of Laureles north of Los Fresnos had been reduced to a chain of sunken islands, separated from the main roads by floodwaters of 2 feet or more in places.

More than 5,000 people moved to public shelters in the three hardest-hit counties and the numbers were expected to grow Thursday as more people became stranded by floodwaters.

In Hidalgo County, Pena said there were several incidents late Wednesday requiring emergency personnel to rescue people from homes.

One family was left huddling in their topless house after winds blew the roof off in the northeast part of the county until rescuers arrived, Pena said. In Cameron County, sheriff's deputies rescued a family of eight from Los Fresnos after floodwaters surrounded their home.

The only serious injury reported Wednesday occurred when the wind knocked a 17-year-old boy from a seventh-story balcony on South Padre Island. The boy suffered a broken hip, leg and a head injury but could not be transported off the island until about 5 p.m. The causeway linking the island to the mainland reopened to the public at 8:30 p.m., said Melissa Zamora, an emergency management spokeswoman on the island.