‘We’re Praying in Brownsville’ : Tides, Winds, Rain Lash Texas’ Rio Grande Valley : Hurricane’s Eye Heads for Mexico

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. — Hurricane Gilbert smashed Texas’ Rio Grande Valley with flood tides and tornadoes today and aimed its 120-m.p.h. winds and torrential rains at a landfall on the sparsely populated northern Mexican coast 65 miles south of the U.S. border.

Thousands of residents along Texas’ 370-mile coast, many evacuated to higher ground after piling sandbags in the doorways of their homes and boarding up windows, huddled in shelters.

“We are going to sit and wait and pray for the best,” said Larry Brown, director of transportation for Brownsville, where officials estimated that as many as one-fourth of the city’s 110,000 residents could end up in emergency shelters.

Heavy Rainfall

By early afternoon, heavy rain fell on this southernmost Texas city, and wind gusts to 62 m.p.h. were measured at the airport and to 65 m.p.h. at Port Isabel. Tides were expected to be 7 to 11 feet above normal.

Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said Gilbert’s eye was expected to hit in Mexico about 65 miles south of Brownsville.

“The core of the hurricane will be over Mexico,” he said. “It’s almost an ideal place for the hurricane to go in if it’s to go in on that north coast.”

With the bulk of the storm still offshore, Gilbert lashed the twin cities of Brownsville and Matamoros, Mexico, on either side of the Rio Grande.

“The streets are flooded, trees are leaning over, windows are vibrating and shaking and some lampposts have already been knocked down,” said an Interior Ministry spokesman in Matamoros.

Development Flooded

The tide at dawn swept in 18 inches deep over a housing development on South Padre Island, a posh line of tourist hotels, condominiums and houses on stilts on Texas’ southeastern-most barrier island.

The hurricane spawned at least eight tornadoes in Texas.

Three twisters struck in rapid succession at about 10 a.m. in the Valley towns of Pharr, San Juan and Alamo, damaging mobile homes and houses but causing no injuries. In the early afternoon three hit Brownsville and two hit Harlingen, causing light damage.

Winds whistling across the saltwater flats along the northern Mexico coast in advance of the storm surpassed 60 m.p.h. in Matamoros at midday. Rains of up to 20 inches were expected in inland areas of Mexico and Texas.

Downed Power Lines

By noon, six inches of rain had fallen on Brownsville, causing extensive street flooding. Deputies reported downed power lines, trees and road signs. The Red Cross reported 46,500 people were housed in 121 shelters in the lower Rio Grande Valley.

A sheriff’s deputy said a looter was arrested today at an abandoned home along the Rio Grande in one of Brownsville’s nicer neighborhoods.

“The power goes, the alarms go and burglars start hitting businesses and residences,” the deputy said.

Gilbert, weakened substantially by its Wednesday slash across Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, had 175-m.p.h. winds as it whipped across the Caribbean earlier this week, making it the most powerful storm on record. At least 47 people were killed--7 in the Dominican Republic, 5 in Venezuela, 9 in Haiti, 12 in Jamaica, 12 in the Yucatan and 2 in Costa Rica.

Once Gilbert crossed the Yucatan, its winds dropped to 120 m.p.h. and, surprisingly to forecasters, did not regain strength in crossing the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The size of the storm while in the Caribbean, however, struck fear among the 3.5 million people living along the 400-mile Texas coast. People began evacuating inland as early as Wednesday, leaving coastal towns boarded up and virtually abandoned.