Left In Pieces

NORTH OF ALTON - Janet Canales held her children tightly and struggled to stand as fierce winds violently rocked her trailer.

Gusts that at times topped 85 mph razed at least two mobile homes and toppled a wall of the new house her family was constructing, sending pieces tumbling against the side of her trailer.

"We were very scared," Canales said as she scaled the remnants of the concrete wall at the entrance to her trailer.
"I thought it was an earthquake," she said.

Strong thunderstorms blew through the Rio Grande Valley early Friday morning, sending 13 people to the hospital with minor injuries, knocking out power across the area and tossing one woman nearly 200 feet from her trailer.

"We've got damage all over the area," said Tony Peña, Hidalgo County's emergency management coordinator. "We don't have any fatalities. We do have multiple injuries."

Those injuries all proved to be minor. The 13 people hospitalized were released by Friday afternoon, including a woman who was swept across the street by the wind as her trailer collapsed.

The most extensive damage was confined to several colonias near the intersection of Monte Cristo Road and Las Cañas Drive, just north of Alton. Apparently, a localized burst of wind damaged nearly 25 homes in the area. At one colonia, the wind tossed the roof of a wrecked trailer hundreds of yards from the home and across Monte Cristo.

The storms began just before 3 a.m. Friday and dissipated by 6:30 a.m., according to the National Weather Service.

Friday morning, the remains of at least two homes and fragments of countless others were scattered throughout the neighborhood. Emergency responders picked through the wreckage to make sure no one was trapped as electrical crews worked to replace the telephone poles strewn across Las Cañas.

Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas said he requested an emergency declaration from the state and hoped to secure housing vouchers to help with the purchase new housing for families whose homes were destroyed.

Dozens of authorities were on the scene hours after the storm. Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said at least 20 of his deputies would work through the day and night to secure the area and prevent looters who might pillage deserted homes.

At least 20 people sought temporary shelter Friday afternoon at the Alton Boys & Girls Club, 389 W. Dawes Ave. And about 178 students at Anne L. Magee Elementary, 3420 W. Rogers Road, Edinburg, missed school because of the storm, said Gilbert Tagle, a spokesman for the Edinburg school district.

The Alton Fire Department was the first agency to respond to the area that bore the brunt of the storms. Fire Chief Elias Saldivar described the scene as chaotic as people without power called out in the darkness.

"We could just hear people screaming for help," Saldivar said.

The Valley is enduring its driest winter and spring on record. Experts said last month that the region would need more than 4 inches of rain to overcome the drought conditions.

Friday's rain was a mere drop in the bucket, according to the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Brownsville.

La Niña weather conditions have brought above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation in recent months. The conditions have resulted in an active fire season - typically the dry months from winter to spring - and prompted Hidalgo County officials to continue a burn ban through July 6, despite the recent rain.

Alton firefighters Friday morning found a 3-year-old girl and her infant brother crawling from the wreckage of their home in one of the area's colonias.

Elsewhere, Gabriella Garcia and her 5-year-old son Gabriel were sleeping when the storm hit. Hail pelted their trailer home and the wind ripped down a fence already rebuilt in January after winds destroyed it. Garcia struggled to look out the window but ultimately couldn't bring herself to do it.

"I wanted to look up but I couldn't," she said. "I was scared."
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Sean Gaffney covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4434.