Flood Waters Burst Mexican Dams; 11 Die

Eleven people died when heavy rains brought down two dams in central Mexico, and on Friday survivors searched for missing people and waited for the rushing water to recede.

When the 162-year-old dam in La Ventilla burst loudly Thursday night, water poured through homes and streets, carrying cows, cars and people trying to pull themselves to safety.

Several villages in San Luis Potosi state were flooded, leaving nine members of one extended family dead.

On Friday, police used wooden poles to gently poke through the debris in search of Maria Guadalupe Orta, 42, and her 9-year-old nephew Juan Eloy, both listed as missing.

President Vicente Fox came to La Ventilla late Friday and offered survivors condolences.

About the same time the dam came down in La Ventilla, near Villa de Reyes, another in neighboring Zacatecas state broke, killing a 73-year-old woman and a 3-year-old girl. The girl’s mother was missing and feared dead late Friday.

San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas--where the El Capulin dam unleashed a torrent on the city of Villa Garcia--each declared a state of emergency.

Fernando Romero, head of the communications center for the federal Civil Protection Agency, said, “People are just waiting for the water to go down in the worst flooded areas.”

Intense rain caused by tropical fronts and high humidity has forced thousands of people to evacuate, authorities said.

In La Ventilla, accordion music played softly against the hum of bulldozers clearing mud and debris from the streets as members of the Orta family and friends filed past nine coffins draped in flowers.

Arturo Meade, a 63-year-old businessman, said his relatives ceded the rock-wall and stone dam to a group of protesting farmers in 1997. No one had maintained it since, he said.