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CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas: Hurricane Dolly was downgraded to a tropical storm late Wednesday after it tore into the south Texas coast with 160-kilometer (100-mile) per hour winds and left 250,000 people without drinking water in Mexico.
The storm made landfall at South Padre Island, Texas, at midday (1700 GMT) as a category two hurricane, the National Hurricane Centre said. The popular resort island was practically submerged under the storm surge, a local official on Mexico's side of the border said.
But Dolly lost some punch as it interacted with the cooler land mass after leaving the Gulf of Mexico, and was to continue weakening as it moves further inland at about 11 kilometres per hour (seven mph), the NHC reported.
By 0300 GMT Thursday, Dolly's sustained winds fell to 110 kilometres per hour (70 mph) as it lumbered to the northwest 90 kilometres (55 miles) from the Texas border town of Brownsville.
"Dolly weakens to a tropical storm but heavy rains continue," the NHC said.
As pounding rain and strong winds battered the US-Mexico coast, authorities worried whether levees could sustain the flood waters.
Bracing for as many as 15 inches (38 centimetres) of rain, residents boarded up windows and piled up sandbags and thousands fled for safer ground.
In Matamoros, Mexico, 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of South Padre Island, Dolly's winds damaged the city's main water treatment plant, leaving half of the 500,000 inhabitants without drinking water, while heavy rain triggered extensive flooding, local officials said.
Texas Governor Rick Perry issued disaster declarations in 14 counties across the southern portion of the state, and hundreds of National Guard troops and other emergency crews were deployed in advance of the storm.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said federal authorities were helping with hurricane preparations.
"We've been identifying resources and pre-positioning supplies in case they are needed after the landfall," she told reporters in Washington.
As the hurricane reached land, the NHC warned that isolated tornadoes could hit south Texas and there could be "widespread flooding across portions of south Texas and northeast Mexico".
As Dolly weakened over southern Texas, hurricane warnings were replaced by tropical storm warnings in many areas north and south of the US-Mexico border.
Initial damage estimates from the storm by risk-modelling service provider AIR Worldwide Corporation varied between 300 million and 1.2 billion dollars in the United States, and less than a quarter of those amounts in Mexico.
"The considerable uncertainty in the loss estimates is due to Dolly's slow forward motion, its significant precipitation and the uncertainty in its future track as it makes its way inland," AIR Worldwide said in a statement.
The first hurricane of the season in the Gulf of Mexico prompted some oil companies to evacuate personnel from their offshore rigs, but by early Wednesday the storm looked set to bypass the major oil producing areas.
However, concerns were raised about the ability of levees to withstand the floodwaters, which could go as high as three feet (one metre) in southern Texas's Cameron County, officials told the local Brownsville Herald.
"I ask that any residents that live near the levee in Cameron County to please move away from the river levees near the Rio Grande River. We believe those will be breached if the path continues," said Johnny Cavazos, emergency management coordinator for the county.
Authorities called for the evacuation of more than 23,000 people from coastal areas in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Governor Eugenio Hernandez said.
The NHC has forecast an especially active 2008 weather season, saying there could be up to nine hurricanes and 12 tropical storms in the Atlantic region. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through the end of November.
About 35 million people live in the most hurricane-prone US region, the southeastern coastline running from the states of North Carolina to Texas, according to the US Census Bureau.
- AFP/so
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