Texas flood creates terrible conditions

Disaster News Network, reporting on Escobares, Texas: Looks can be deceiving. Nowhere is that more true than in this tiny Texas town, where things may look fine on the outside but major problems and dangers and risks to human life lurk on the inside. "They're in serious trouble," says Tom Brownmiller, co-leader of the Mission Presbytery Hurricane Dolly task force.

Three weeks after torrential rains — at least 13 inches — created a "lake" three miles wide and a mile long flooding the town, residents are still trying to clean up, some of them resigned to living in mold- and mildew-infested houses unable to afford repairs. The flooding was exacerbated by ground already sodden from Hurricane Dolly, which crashed into the south Texas coast as a Category 2 hurricane on July 23.

Mayor Noel Escobar says that while his town may have "lucked out" when it came to damages from Dolly, it was left reeling from the unexpected downpour on Aug.18, which was compounded less than a week later with another heavy storm in the Starr County community. "We used to have potholes in our roads. Now we don't have roads," Escobar said….

Hurricane Dolly, July 23 of this year, NASA, Wikimedia Commons