Rescue efforts resumed on Wednesday outside the Texas-Mexico border city of Eagle Pass where a tornado killed at least seven people, destroyed two schools and damaged more than 20 homes. Three other people died a few kilometres away in Piedras Negras, Mexico.
Five victims were in one mobile home. ”It was a whole family, and they were all together, probably like they were huddling,” said police officer Ezekiel Navjas.
Lightning was blamed for an 11th death on Wednesday as the huge weather system plowed through the United States Midwest and South. The bolt started a fire in Louisiana that killed a 101-year-old man, authorities said.
The huge weather system has spun off tornadoes in Oklahoma and Colorado, caused flooding in Iowa and Nebraska and piled snow in the Rockies.
In Dallas, where winds peeled the roofs off some buildings, American Airlines cancelled about 200 flights and diverted about 80 others, spokesperson Billy Sanez said.
The Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport’s flight-control tower was temporarily evacuated on Tuesday night but the airport remained open, said Ken Capps, the airport’s vice-president of public affairs.
Elsewhere, as much as 8,9cm of rain fell on Tuesday on western and central Iowa, causing at least one landslide that buried part of Interstate 29 in trees and mud. No vehicles were driving through the spot at the time, officials said.
In Colorado, six buses carrying at least 60 children were stranded when the storm dropped more than 30,5cm of snow in about two hours, said Rob Finley, assistant fire marshal for El Paso county.
Tornados touched down in Colorado and Oklahoma, but no injuries were reported. — Sapa-AP
Associated Press writers Matt Joyce and Terry Wallace in Dallas contributed to this report