Post by Admin on May 26, 2015 14:18:05 GMT -4
WIMBERLEY, Texas (AP) -- Recovery teams resumed the search Tuesday for 12 people who are missing after a rain-swollen river carried a Texas vacation home off its foundation and slammed it into a bridge downstream.
In Houston, authorities recovered three more bodies from the floodwaters - two of them in the city and a third in a vehicle on Interstate 45. That brings to 11 the number of people killed by the storms in Oklahoma and Texas.
Vehicles left stranded on a flooded Interstate 45 in Houston, Texas on May 26, 2015. Heavy rains throught Texas put the city of Houston under massive ammounts of water, closing roadways and trapping residents in their cars and buildings, according to local reports. Rainfall reached up to 11 inches(27.9cm) in some parts of the state, national forecasters reported, and the heavy rains quickly pooled over the state's already saturated soil.
The water rose overnight after the area received about 11 inches of rain, much of it in a six-hour period.
Between 500 and 700 homes in surrounding Harris County have sustained some level of damage, according to county flood control district spokeswoman Kim Jackson.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker said officials in the nation's fourth-largest city would be "on the alert" as the bayous rise.
The search for the missing picked up after a holiday weekend of storms dumped record rainfall on the Plains and Midwest.
Authorities were also searching for victims and assessing damage just across the Texas-Mexico border in Ciudad Acuna, where a tornado Monday killed 13 people and left at least five unaccounted for.