Washington - Grinding closer to the Mexico-Texas coast in
the Gulf of Mexico Hurricane Dolly Wednesday forced residents of
Brownsville, Texas to brace for the border town's first hurricane in
almost a decade.
Already on Wednesday some 500 residents of San Benito, Texas had
fled their homes to seek shelter in a school building.
The second hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic storm season was
about 65 kilometres east of Brownsville home to some 172,000 people
at 9 am local time Wednesday moving at about 11 kilometres per hour,
according to the US National Hurricane Center. The storm rating had
been raised to a Category 2 event, meaning winds over 160 kilometres
per hour, before landfall, the center said.
'Tree branches are down, and a lot of streetlights are out,' Sokie
Gonzales, 55, a lifelong resident and a manager of Brownsville's
Super 8 motel, told Bloomberg news. 'We've gathered flashlights and
backed up the computers. Now we wait.'
Dolly is the season's first hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, home
to more than a quarter of US oil production. The storm has steered
south of most rigs located offshore from East Texas and Louisiana.
A hurricane warning stretches for about 300 miles along the US and
Mexican coasts, from Corpus Christi, Texas, southward to Rio San
Fernando, Mexico. Dolly may make landfall by noon in Brownsville.
The northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas began evacuating people
after Dolly shifted its path northward from the Yucatan Peninsula on
Tuesday.
Some 23,000 people were moved from their homes and hundreds of
troops were sent to the state where heavy rain, flooding and
overflowing rivers had already damaged property.
Texas mobilized 1,200 and National Guard members after a hurricane
watch was declared for part of the coast south of Corpus Christi.
Many people barricaded their homes as a precaution against rising
water levels, while others left for safer areas. Radio and television
issued hourly situation reports and gave details of emergency plans.
Meteorologists fear that low-lying coastal areas could be flooded
and warned that inland regions might also be affected in the coming
days.
Mexico is also being pummelled by Tropical Storm Genevieve, which
is moving in a westerly direction along the Mexican coast bringing
heavy rainfall in the southern states of Guerrero, Michoacan and
Colima.
The hurricane season in the Atlantic officially lasts from June 1
to November 30, and experts were expecting 15-20 storms over this
period.
USA
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