Alex, Atlantic’s 1st hurricane of season, nears Mexico, Texas coasts as Category 2 storm

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Powerful hurricane Alex nears Mexico, Texas coasts

SAN FERNANDO, Mexico — Powerful Hurricane Alex neared landfall on Mexico’s northern Gulf coast Wednesday, spawning tornados in Texas, forcing evacuations in both countries and whipping up high waves that frustrated oil-spill cleanup efforts and pushed globs of crude onto beaches.

Alex strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph (155 kph) as it churned across the Gulf of Mexico, its rains already lashing Mexican fishing villages whose residents fled to the town of San Fernando on buses and in the back of pickup trucks.

Hundreds of people filled a storm shelter in an auditorium in San Fernando, which is slightly inland in Tamaulipas state and about 40 miles (65 kms) from where Alex is expected to make landfall. “We didn’t bring anything but these clothes,” said evacuee Carolina Sanchez, 21, motioning to two small plastic bags at her feet, as her 3-year-old sister Belen Sanchez Gonzalez clutched a purple and white stuffed toy poodle at the storm shelter. Her father, a fisherman, was one of many coastal residents who stayed behind to keep watch on their homes and possessions.

Engineer Abel Ramirez of San Fernando’s Civil Protection and Fire Department said seven fishing villages, with a combined population of about 5,000, were being evacuated.

About 80 miles (130 kms) to the north, in Brownsville, Texas, more than 100 families took shelter in a high school, which was beginning to quickly fill up.

Sergio Gonzales, 18, arrived with nine other family members after his father decided their house may not survive the flood.

Gonzales didn’t agree with his dad.

“I think it’s just going to be a normal one,” he said.

Alex spawned two tornadoes around Brownsville, including one that flipped over a trailer. No injuries were reported.

Officials also closed the causeway to South Padre Island, a popular vacation getaway off the Texas coast, and 9-foot waves were reported on the island’s beach.

The storm was far from the Gulf oil spill, but cleanup vessels were sidelined by the hurricane’s ripple effects. Six-foot waves churned up by the hurricane splattered beaches in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida with oil and tar balls.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the hurricane’s eye was about 40 miles (90 kilometers) north-northeast of La Pesca, Mexico, and about 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Brownsville, and will make landfall in northeastern Mexico sometime Wednesday night.

It was the first June hurricane in the Atlantic since 1995, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.

Bands of heavy rains quickly inundated roads in Matamoros, a worrisome sign with Alex expected to dump as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain in the region, with perhaps 20 inches (50 centimeters) in isolated areas. The flat, marshy region is prone to flooding.

Many in the border cities braved the growing rains: Commuters struggled to get to work, pedestrians crossed the bridge connecting Matamoros and Brownsville and newspaper hawkers manned the less-flooded intersections.

Government workers stuck duct tape in X’s across the windows of the immigration office at the main downtown bridge in Matamoros on Tuesday. Trucks cruised slowly down residential streets carrying large jugs of drinking water and cars packed supermarket parking lots.

Flash floods also forced hundreds of evacuations in the southern Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, but hurricane specialist Eric Blake said those rains were only indirectly related to Alex and possibly the residual effects of Hurricane Darby, which has dissipated in the Pacific.

Three people, including a 5-year-old child, were killed when heavy rains and winds brought down a wall over their wooden house in Acapulco, state Civil Protection authorities said.

Texas also watched Alex’s outer bands warily. Alex was expected to bring torrential rains to a Rio Grande delta region that is ill-suited — economically and geographically — to handle it.

Texas residents had been preparing for the storm for days, readying their homes and businesses and stocking up on household essentials. But concerns eased as the storm headed farther south toward Mexico.

Engineers were watching the levees in south Texas as the storm approached the area.

On nearby South Padre Island, the mood was less anxious. Although hotels and restaurants looked deserted compared to the crush of vacationers who normally pack the popular vacation spot in the summer, those who stuck around didn’t size up Alex as much of a threat.

One couple renewed their wedding vows on the beach as a few campers reluctantly moved their trailers out of the park hours before a mandatory evacuation deadline.

“It’s June. It’s too soon for hurricanes,” said Gloria Santos, of Edinburgh, after hitching her trailer back to her truck.

Jerry Wilson, 50, also didn’t think much of Alex, though he struggled in the fierce gusts to hoist a cloth-tipped pole to clean high-mounted cameras across the island that will let Internet viewers watch Alex’s arrival live online.

“We got two generators and lots of guns and ammo, so we’re not worried about it,” Wilson said.

Scientists in Texas were also monitoring a buoy system that records the Gulf’s water directions and velocity every half-hour. That information will determine where the oil could spread, should it approach Texas as tar balls on the beach, said Texas land commissioner Jerry Patterson.

Oil rigs and platforms in the path of the storm’s outer bands were evacuated, and President Barack Obama issued a pre-emptive federal disaster declaration for southern Texas counties late Tuesday.

The three oil rigs and 28 platforms evacuated are not part of the Gulf oil spill response.

In Louisiana, the storm pushed an oil patch toward Grand Isle and uninhabited Elmer’s Island, dumping tar balls as big as apples on the beach. Cleanup workers were kept at bay by pouring rain and lightning that zigzagged across the dark sky. Boom lining the beach had been tossed about, and it couldn’t be put back in place until the weather cleared.

“The sad thing is that it’s been about three weeks since we had any big oil come in here,” marine science technician Michael Malone said. “With this weather, we lost all the progress we made.”

Associated Press Writers Paul J. Weber in Brownsville, Texas and Mary Foster and Tom Breen in Grand Isle, Louisiana, contributed to this report.