Wimberley (US): The death toll from a barrage of storms and floods in Texas and Oklahoma climbed to 19, with more than a dozen others missing, and another round of rain threatened to complicate the cleanup in hard-hit Houston.
The forecast was for 2 to 3 more inches of rain in the Houston area, a day after flooding triggered by nearly a foot of rain in a matter of hours swamped neighborhoods and highways and stranded hundreds of motorists.
Crews resumed the search for 11 people missing and presumed dead after the swollen Blanco River surged through the small tourist town of Wimberley, between San Antonio and Austin. Houston Mayor Annise Parker said two people whose boat capsized during a rescue effort were also missing.
Authorities, meanwhile, defended their telephone and in-person warnings to residents ahead of the bad weather but acknowledged the difficulty in reaching tourists and said a messaging system in Houston is awaiting improvements.
"Nobody was saying, 'Get out! Get out! Get out!'" said Brenda Morton of Wimberley, a popular bed-and-breakfast getaway near Austin that is surrounded by vineyards. She said year-round residents know the risks, but "people who were visiting or had summer homes, you have company from out of town, you don't know. You don't know when that instant is."
Morton lives three houses down from a two-story vacation home that was swept off its 10-foot pylons by a wall of water early Sunday with eight people inside, including three children. The floodwaters slammed the house into a bridge downstream on the Blanco. All eight victims were missing.
Authorities in surrounding Hays County said the warnings included multiple cellphone alerts and calls to landlines. The first wave of warnings went to phones of registered users, which could have missed many tourists. But officials said that as the danger escalated they used a commercial database that would have delivered a warning to virtually anyone whose cellphone was in range of local towers.
Sheriff's deputies also went along the riverbanks and told people to evacuate, but officials could not say whether those in the washed-away home talked to police.
In Houston, warnings from the National Weather Service buzzed on mobile phones, but city officials said they haven't installed a system that would allow them to alert residents with targeted warnings depending on their location without the need to register.
The city is still working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to get that system running, said Michael Walter, spokesman for Houston's Office of Emergency Management.
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