9 Dead, 9 Missing in Mexican Storm

Nine people drowned and nine others, mostly children, were listed as missing Friday in the aftermath of rare heavy rains and flash flooding in this northern industrial city.

Officials said 3,500 people had been driven from their homes during Thursday’s daylong downpour, which was described as the heaviest in at least 20 years.

“There are many missing,” Jorge Trevino, governor of the state of Nuevo Leon, told a news conference. “Very probably, unfortunately, there will be more” deaths.

Authorities said that up to eight inches of rain fell Thursday during a 10-hour period in some portions of Monterrey and its suburbs. Monterrey, capital of Nuevo Leon, is 138 miles from the Texas border at Laredo.

Flood waters had receded in most areas of the city by Friday and traffic was nearly back to normal.

Because of the nearly constant drought conditions in the city of 2.8 million people, the area’s poor had built their tiny concrete and tin huts close to the drainage canals. Many of these homes were lost when the Topo Chico canal overflowed its banks and water raged through others.

An estimated 111,150 acres with bean and corn plants were damaged by the flooding caused by the heavy rains.