HOUSTON — Homeowners dragged soggy carpet to the curb and mopped up coffee-colored muck Wednesday after a barrage of storms and floods in Texas and Oklahoma left at least 19 people dead and a dozen others missing.
More rain fell on the hard-hit Houston area, temporarily complicating the cleanup a day after a downpour of nearly a foot triggered the worst flooding the nation’s fourth-largest city has seen in years. Hundreds of homes were damaged.
Severe weather continued in other parts of Texas, with hundreds of people west of Fort Worth told to evacuate along the rising Brazos River and flash flood warnings posted in many areas.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker said two people whose boat capsized during a rescue were missing. Another person was missing in suburban Houston. And in central Texas, crews resumed the search for nine people feared dead after the swollen Blanco River smashed through Wimberley, a small tourist town between San Antonio and Austin, over the Memorial Day weekend.
This has been the wettest month on record for Texas, and there are still several days left. The state climatologist’s office said Wednesday that Texas has gotten an average of 7.54 inches of rain in May, breaking the old record of 6.66 inches, set in June 2004.
Texas has been hit with almost continuous storms for the past week to 10 days.
Wimberley saw some of the heaviest damage, including the loss of a two-story vacation home that was swept downstream and slammed into a bridge. Eight people in the home went missing, including three children.
The flooding in Houston affected virtually every part of the city. At least 2,500 vehicles were abandoned by drivers, and anywhere from 800 to 1,400 homes were damaged, officials said.
Thousands of homes were also damaged or destroyed in the central Texas corridor that includes Wimberley — 744 of them in San Marcos alone, said Kenneth Bell, emergency management coordinator for San Marcos.
The death toll climbed to 19 — 15 in Texas, four in Oklahoma. Houston alone had six storm-related deaths.
