CIUDAD ACUÑA, Mexico — A tornado raged through a city on the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, destroying homes, flinging cars like matchsticks and ripping an infant from its mother’s arms. At least 13 people were killed, authorities said.
In Texas, 12 people were reported missing in flash flooding from a line of storms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. Authorities say the 12 people reported missing after flash floods in central Texas were staying together in a home swept away by the rushing water in a small town popular with tourists.
The baby was also missing after the twister that hit Ciudad Acuña, a city of 180,000 across from Del Rio, Texas, sent its infant carrier flying. Rescue workers began digging through the rubble of damaged homes in a race to find victims.
The twister hit a seven-block area, which Victor Zamora, interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila, described as “devastated.”
Hundreds of people were being treated at local hospitals, authorities said, and as many as 800 homes had been destroyed, with thousands more damaged.
“There’s nothing standing, not walls, not roofs,” said Edgar Gonzalez, a spokesman for the city government, describing some of the destroyed homes in a 1-square-mile stretch.
By midday, 13 bodies had been recovered — 10 adults and three infants.
Family members and neighbors gathered around a pickup truck where the bodies of a woman and two children were laid out in the truck’s bed, covered with sheets. Two relatives reached down to touch the bodies, covered their eyes and wept.
Photos from the scene showed cars with their hoods torn 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.
The twister struck not long after daybreak, around the time buses were preparing to take children to school, Zamora said.
In the U.S., the weather system dumped record rainfall on parts of the Plains and Midwest, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding that forced at least 2,000 Texans from their homes. A vacation house in Texas was swept away by a rain-swollen river.
The storms were blamed for five deaths over the holiday weekend, including two in Oklahoma and three in Texas.
A 14-year-old boy and his dog were found dead Monday in a suburban Dallas storm drain. DeSoto police report an officer assisted by a search dog found the bodies of Damien Blade and his dog Monday near Blade’s home. Investigators say both apparently had drowned. A police statement says Damien’s family had reported him missing about 10 p.m. Sunday after one of his two dogs showed up alone at the house, wet and extremely muddy.
Authorities have said at least one other person was killed in flooding on Sunday, and a high school senior died Saturday night after her car was caught in high water.
Among the worst-affected communities were Wimberley and San Marcos, which are in central Texas along the Blanco River in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio. “It looks pretty bad out there,” Hays County emergency management coordinator Kharley Smith said of Wimberley, where an estimated 350 to 400 homes were destroyed. “We do have whole streets with maybe one or two houses left on them and the rest are just slabs.”
About 1,000 homes were damaged throughout Hays County. Five San Marcos police cars were washed away, and the firehouse was flooded, said Kristi Wyatt, a spokeswoman for San Marcos.
Rivers swelled so quickly that whole communities awoke Sunday surrounded by water. The Blanco crested above 40 feet — more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet. The river swamped Interstate 35 and forced parts of the busy north-south highway to close. Rescuers used pontoon boats and a helicopter to pull people out.
A tornado briefly touched down Sunday in Houston, damaging rooftops, toppling trees, blowing out windows and sending at least two people to a hospital. Dallas faced severe flooding from the Trinity River. The Red and Wichita rivers also rose far above flood stage.
The recent rainfall may officially end the drought that has gripped the region for years, according to Forrest Mitchell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s office in Norman, Okla. He said many lakes and reservoirs are full.
