Texas flooding kills at least eight

MICO, Texas -- Hundreds of people fled three small West Texas towns Saturday as a storm dumped more than a foot of rain on an area that rarely sees more than 2 feet a year, while rainfall tapered off in flood-weary Central Texas, where water surrounded homes in 29 counties.

With thunderstorms and locally heavy rain remaining in the forecast through the middle of this week, it was unclear when the thousands of evacuees around the state would be allowed to return home. One evacuee, Erik Lyon, had moved to New Braunfels since the town's 1998 flood and didn't expect that to happen again, but on Saturday he sat on a cot at a Red Cross shelter in the Central Texas city checking ads for homes on higher ground.

"Before we were debating it, but now it's almost definite. I think we are going to move for sure," the 26-year-old musician said. Statewide, a week of flooding has forced at least 4,000 people to evacuate, killed at least eight people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. The latest death came Friday, when an 11-year-old boy was removed from life support five days after he fell into a swollen San Antonio creek. One man was listed as missing.

More than 30 inches

In some places, more than 30 inches of rain has fallen in less than a week. Two dozen counties remained under flood warnings Saturday, the National Weather Service said.

Elsewhere in Central Texas, water continued seeping through a crack in a 90-year-old dam on the Medina River. Families living along the river downstream from the dam had been watching anxiously for days, and many already had packed up and left. However, the water level behind the dam was slowly dropping after cresting about 18 inches below the top, and on Saturday Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission spokesman Elston Johnson gave residents good news: "It does appear to be safe."

Some people complained that the risk of dam failure had been exaggerated, but others felt the warnings were justified. "You can't blow it out of proportion when there are so many people living below" the dam, Mico resident Jack Love said of the dam on Medina Lake northwest of San Antonio.

Another resident of New Braunfels, a city northeast of San Antonio, stood about 100 yards from his house Saturday and watched water from the Guadalupe River lap at the top of his front door. Paul Wukasch and his wife and four children had started moving out Thursday, taking photo albums, antique furniture and artwork.

"It's all material stuff," he said as the brown, trash-filled water swept past. "That's the only way you can look at it."

About 200 miles northwest of Wukasch's home, as much as a foot of rain fell overnight on West Texas land baked dry by an extended drought around Abilene.

Authorities ordered several hundred people to evacuate the nearby towns of Buffalo Gap, Tuscola and Lawn. Abilene's average annual rainfall is 23 inches.