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 News from Around the Americas | April 2007 
Help Flowing in to US-Mexican Border
 Disaster News Network
| | Tornado damage in Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.(Alfredo Guerrero/Southwest Texas Live!) | 
| | Rosita Valley Elementary School was hit hard by tornado. Mobile home which slammed into the school killed a family of five. (Bill Sontag/Southwest Texas Live!) |
Help continued to pour in this weekend to towns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border which were slammed by a powerful tornado.
Residents in both Eagle Pass, Texas, and across the Rio Grande in "sister-city" Piedras Negras, Mexico, were salvaging what they could from their damaged homes and trying to clean up debris from the Tuesday night storm that killed 10 people and injured at least 100 others.
Eagle Pass residents were allowed to return to their homes on Thursday for the first time. For many, just as in Piedras Negras, there was little left.
The tornado cut a wide swath of destruction, damaging or destroying hundreds of homes and businesses, two elementary schools, a church and a sewage treatment plant. In Eagle Pass, officials said nearly 200 mobile homes and 60 houses were destroyed.
Faith-based and community organizations responded to the disaster on both side of the border.
Church World Service announced Thursday that it was sending health kits and blankets to Eagle Pass to be distributed by La Trinidad Methodist Church. It also announced a national fund-raising appeal to assist people affected by spring storms, tornadoes and flooding throughout the U.S.
The Salvation Army had five mobile feeding kitchens in Eagle Pass and was also serving survivors and relief crews in Piedras Negras. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief deployed one cleaning unit, one feeding unit and one chaplain to Eagle Pass.
Texas Baptist Men were working in Piedras Negras, serving up about 5,000 meals to residents in the Villa de Fuente area.
Some 1,700 clean clothing packets, along with 400 sheets and blankets and 700 personal hygiene kits were sent to the area by Adventist Community Services.
The Family Service Association said it had counselors in Eagle Pass, a town of about 24,000 and the county seat of Maverick County.
Businesses such as the HEB grocery store chain continued to ship in truckloads of food, water and other supplies. Volunteers from the company were also helping out in the stricken communities.
The Humane Society also crews and wire crates to help people find and rescue family pets.
A San Antonio-based group, Amigos De Coahuila, established a disaster relief fund called San Antonio Helping Mexico, for survivors in Piedras Negras, a town of about 142,000. A relief fund was also started for Eagle Pass residents by students at the University of Texas.
On the U.S. side of the border, officials said that five members of one family were killed when their mobile home was slammed into a nearby building. Another death in Shreveport, La., was linked to the storm, bring the death toll to at least 11.
State officials have asked that Maverick County be declared a federal disaster area. |
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