Hurricane’s Remnants Head Northeast; Flooding Ebbs in Mexico

Hurricane Gilbert’s remnants swept from Texas across Oklahoma on Monday, with heavy rain and flooding that forced temporary evacuations in one Oklahoma town. The storm earlier had spun off 41 tornadoes and killed three people in Texas and Oklahoma.

In Monterrey, Mexico, a small stream coursing through a mangled landscape of twisted metal and crumbled concrete homes was all that remained of a killer flood spawned there by the hurricane.

The low-pressure system that last week was the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere continued to spread showers and thunderstorms in the United States, along a line toward the Northeast, with gusts to about 40 m.p.h. Monday.

Sifting Through Muck

In Texas, Gov. Bill Clements toured the tornado-ravaged areas of San Antonio, which suffered more than $35-million damage, apparently worse than coastal cities that faced the main storm, officials said.

Although the waters receded in Monterrey, the human cost of the calamity continued to rise. Hundreds sifted through the muck to salvage possessions. Thousands spent another day in shelters for the homeless. Workers still dug for bodies.

More than 100 people have been confirmed dead in that industrial center, which is still stunned by the sudden, storm-whipped rebirth Saturday of the Santa Catarina River. The river, dry for decades, became a savage torrent 10 feet deep and 150 yards wide.

“We just got three blankets out and lost everything else,” said Ramona Carrizales Lopez, sitting outside a shelter for the homeless. Lopez was among thousands of people who had built meager homes in the bone-dry riverbed that cuts through the most populated region of northern Mexico.

Hurricane Gilbert had brought ferocious winds and up to 12 inches of rain as it churned northwest through the Gulf of Mexico, pushing up against the 14,000-foot mountains that ring Monterrey, a city of 2.8 million that is the capital of Nuevo Leon state.

The Santa Catarina riverbed suddenly swelled with water that swept away entire ramshackle communities, miles of roads and a sprawling sports complex that had been built in the flood’s path.

Four buses and other vehicles were dragged into the torrent. Bus passengers are presumed to make up most of the more than 100 people confirmed dead. Officials said many who were on the buses are still missing.

Gilbert, ironically, did its worst damage on an inland Mexican city at a time when the storm was at one of its weakest points.

Digging With Hands

On Monday, the Santa Catarina River was only a 15-foot-wide stream. Scores of people lined the banks, digging with their hands to salvage what they could.

The Santa Catarina once had a steady stream of water, but in the decades since it dried up, the state government had begun to use the riverbed to build major thoroughfares, high-tension electricity towers and underground pipelines and to plant hundreds of trees.

But most impressive were the miles of tennis and basketball courts, soccer and baseball fields and jogging tracks and even dressing rooms used daily by thousands at the sports complex that was destroyed.

Alejandro Chapa, mayor of San Pedro-Garza Garcia, the suburb of Monterrey hit hardest by the disaster, said the government would rebuild the roads and sports complex. But he said those people with homes on the riverbed that escaped ruin would be allowed to return there only provisionally.

Late Sunday, the storm moved over Wichita Falls, Tex., with rain and high wind, and Monday it was over eastern Oklahoma.

An area west of Wichita Falls was deluged with 4 1/2 inches of rain, and roads in Ozona, in western Texas, were under water. The mass of moisture extended to Chicago.

Parts of Oklahoma received up to eight inches of rain in two days, causing minor flooding. About a dozen residents of a low-lying area in Kingfisher, Okla., were evacuated late Sunday, and others were told to be ready to leave.

The Rio Grande River in southwest Texas was expected to rise to 12 feet above flood stage.