Sunday 31 May 2015

Texas floods: death toll rises as body is recovered and 11 people are still missing


Dallas police said on Saturday a man’s body had been recovered from standing water, after storms flooded parts of the metro. The find brought the death toll in Texas and Oklahoma from storms and floods since Memorial Day weekend to 29 – 25 of them in Texas. Eleven were still missing on Saturday.

In Oklahoma, state troopers said their officers shot dead a man during an argument arising from an attempted flood rescue.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area saw another round of heavy rain on Saturday, a day after President Obama signed a disaster declaration. The White House said the president ordered federal aid on Friday, to supplement other recovery efforts in the area that has been affected by severe weather since 4 May. Texas governor Greg Abbott had earlier requested a presidential disaster declaration.

Discussing the discovery of the body in the metro system, a Dallas police spokesman, Juan Fernandez, said officers found the man, who was not immediately identified, floating in the water. Fernandez said the body was sent to the county medical examiner’s office.

Storms dumped as much as 7in of rain across the area on Thursday night. The other Dallas-area death discovered on Friday was a man who drowned in his truck after it was swept into a culvert in the suburb of Mesquite.

Rivers around the Dallas area have all swelled in the last week. Before Saturday’s rain, the National Weather Service (NWS) said 16.07in of rain fell across the Dallas area in May, easily eclipsing a 1982 record of 13.66in.

Sunday 31 May 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/30/dallas-texas-heavy-rain-floods

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