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Texas warily watches Dean and prepares
2007-08-21
Texas braced for the possibility of flooding from Hurricane Dean after the storm plowed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula early Tuesday as the most intense hurricane to hit land in almost two decades. Forecasters say Dean's outer bands could bring heavy rain, flooding and gusty winds to the Rio Grande Valley if it continues on a course across the Gulf of Campeche in the next two days. In Texas, emergency officials were keeping an eye on the storm and preparing for the possibility that it could do more than just sideswipe the state and actually shift northward into South Texas, said Jack Colley, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos issued a countywide voluntary evacuation and a mandatory evacuation of trailers and recreational vehicles on South Padre Island over the weekend. "I'm not going to lift our evacuations until we know the storm is continuing out of reach," he said Monday. Hurricane Dean had already killed at least 12 people as it stormed across the Caribbean. Dean struck land early Tuesday just north of the Mexico-Belize border as a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 160 mph. It quickly lost some of that wind speed over land, but Dean was still the third most intense hurricane to make landfall since record keeping began in the 1800s, the National Hurricane Center said Tuesday. The atmospheric pressure in a hurricane's eye is one way to measure its strength: the lower the pressure, the greater its power to suck in air and drive winds. The only other storms to hit land with lower pressure were the Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys in 1935 and Hurricane Gilbert that hit Cancun, Mexico, in 1988. Leaders in Cameron County at Texas' southern tip were watching cautiously. The National Guard and search-and-rescue teams were mobilized in case of the worst, shelters were set up in 28 communities, and as many as 80,000 barrels of gasoline were shipped to Rio Grande Valley gas stations. The state sent six C-130 aircraft to Cameron County in case any critically ill patients needed to be evacuated from hospitals, and about 3,000 buses were on standby for possible evacuations. Unlike the devastating hurricanes of 2005, Katrina and Rita, Dean wasn't expected to swing far enough north to endanger the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas drilling regions. But the threat of torrential rainfall came as parts of Texas were still saturated from flooding caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin. "If you live near the Texas coast, get your house and your belongings in order, gather the important documentation that you need in the event of an evacuation," Gov. Rick Perry warned. Mayor Bob Pinkerton of the resort town of South Padre Island said there were no plans to evacuate while forecasts showed the storm heading far south of the Texas border. Still, he issued a state of emergency on Saturday and said it would remain in effect, with town emergency management officials on the ready. ___ Associated Press Writer Lynn Brezosky in Harlingen contributed to this report.
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