At Least 8 Killed in Texas as Store Collapses in Rain

A downtown department store in this border city collapsed during a torrential rainstorm Thursday, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 40 others, officials said.

And as night fell, hundreds of volunteers worked to sift their way through the dense pile of rubble, searching for those who might still be alive beneath the wreckage. Sgt. Dean Poos, a spokesman for the Brownsville Police Department, said he believed the death toll could climb to as high as 20.

The three-story Amigo Stores, a half-block from the downtown Gateway International Bridge to Mexico, collapsed in a heap during a driving rainstorm that flooded streets and cut visibility to near zero. Poos said officials believe the storm was a contributing factor in the store’s collapse.

“It’s a disaster,” Cameron County Sheriff Alex Perez said of the scene in this community across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico. “It was like a bomb hit that corner store there.”

With no warning, the 19-year-old cinder-block building began to sway, then the storefront fell toward the sidewalk and the roof caved in, witnesses said.

Poos said the store owner, Bernard Levin, first became alarmed when the store light began blinking during the storm. When the building began to shake, he dove under a nearby table.

The next thing he knew, Poos said, Levin was looking up and seeing the sky above him.

10 Workers in Store

Poos said Levin told police that there had been 10 employees in the store at the time of the accident, along with five or six customers. But there were fears that many people might have taken shelter under the store’s overhang during the violent storm.

The first police officer on the scene was Javier Saenz, who was standing by the international bridge when he heard the first sirens from rescue vehicles. He said the storm had been so intense that he did not hear the building crumbling. Saenz said the ambulances and police cars at first were unable to get through because of the flooded streets.

Saenz said he saw a man standing at the top of the heap (presumably Levin), and five or six dazed women. One trapped woman was imbedded in concrete debris from her waist down and her arm was caught between a chunk of the shattered building and a parking meter.

Saenz said he got to the people on the top of the heap by climbing to the roof of a Woolworth’s store next door and guiding people to safety from there.

Late Thursday night, police would only confirm eight dead, but Border Patrolman Tom Slowinski said he believed his specially trained dog, Barco, had detected three other bodies that had not been reached by rescue workers. The dog is normally used to detect illegal aliens trying to cross the border in trucks and trains.

Make Way Into Tunnel

Slowinski and Barco worked their way into a tunnel in the debris.

“It was dark and there was about six inches of water on the floor,” Slowinski said. “There was a guy pinned down. You could only see his arms and head. He had to be dead. I wish we could have found someone alive, but it doesn’t look like we will.”

Poos, the police spokesman, said the last person carried out alive was removed at 3 p.m., an hour after the building collapsed. He said more than 40 people who were injured had been taken to two area hospitals. A vacant building across the street from the search site was turned into a temporary medical center, where bodies would be identified before being taken to a makeshift morgue at the city’s civic center.

Poos said that about 300 rescue workers, many of them from surrounding communities, were on hand to assist in the search operations. Mark Carlson, a firefighter from nearby Edinburg, said only a few at a time could remove the rubble because “they don’t need too much weight up top.”

As night fell, men atop the rubble were using a blowtorch to cut through steel, while onlookers stood silently behind a chain-link fence to watch the search.

Witness Describes Collapse

One of the few people who witnessed the building’s collapse was Anthony Padilla, a photographer for the local newspaper, the Brownsville Herald. He was shooting weather pictures in front of the store when the roof collapsed.

He told United Press International that he heard a loud noise and watched a “tan-colored cloud” move from the back of the building toward the front, where several people had sought shelter.

“Then the entire store front blew out. Glass came exploding at me,” Padilla said.

“These people (seeking shelter) were engulfed by shards of glass. Flying glass was everywhere. Then, the very next instant, it just came down. You couldn’t see anything. You could just see the rubble. The building came down.”