CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico -- A tornado raged through a city on the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, destroying homes, flinging cars like matchsticks and ripping an infant from its mother's arms. At least 13 people were killed, authorities said.
In Texas, 12 people were reported missing after the vacation home they were staying in was swept away by rushing floodwaters in a small town popular with tourists.
The baby was also missing after the twister that hit Ciudad Acuna, a city of 125,000 across from Del Rio, Texas, ripped the child's carrier from the mother's hands and sent it flying, said Victor Zamora, interior secretary of the northern state of Coahuila.
The twister hit a seven-block area that Zamora described as "devastated."
Hundreds of people were being treated at hospitals, authorities said, and as many as 800 homes had been destroyed, with thousands more damaged.
"There's nothing standing, not walls, not roofs," said Edgar Gonzalez, a spokesman for the city government, describing some of the destroyed homes in a 1-square-mile area.
By midday, 13 bodies had been recovered -- 10 adults and three infants.
Family members and neighbors gathered around a pickup where the bodies of a woman and two children were laid out in the truck's bed, covered with sheets. Two relatives reached down to touch the bodies, covered their eyes and wept.
Photos from the scene showed cars with their hoods torn off, resting upended against single-story houses. One car's frame was bent around the gate of a house. A bus was seen flipped and crumpled on a roadway.
The twister struck not long after daybreak, about the time buses were preparing to take children to school, Zamora said.
In the U.S., a line of storms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes dumped record rainfall on parts of the Plains and Midwest, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding that forced at least 2,000 Texans from their homes.
Central Texas continued to be pounded by heavy rains that had caused the Blanco River to rise during the weekend by 26 feet in a single hour.
Witnesses reported seeing the swollen river push a vacation house off its foundation and smash it into a bridge. Only pieces of the home have been found, Hays County Judge Bert Cobb said.
One person who was rescued from the home told workers that the other 12 inside were all connected to two families, Cobb said.
The house was in Wimberley Valley, an area known for its bed-and-breakfast inns and weekend rental cottages.
Dana Campbell, a retired engineer who lives on a bluff above the river, said the floodwaters left behind damage that resembled the path of a tornado "as far as the eye can see."
The storms were blamed for six deaths Saturday and Sunday, including three in Oklahoma. A firefighter in Claremore, near Tulsa, was swept into a storm drain Sunday morning while attempting a rescue, and Tulsa woman had died Saturday after her automobile hydroplaned on a highway.
A man's body was recovered from a flooded area along the Blanco River in Texas. Elsewhere, the bodies of a 14-year-old and his dog were pulled from a storm drain in suburban Dallas after they apparently drowned, authorities said. And on Saturday, a high school senior from Devine, about 30 miles southwest of San Antonio, was killed after her car was caught in high water.
On Monday, a tornado destroyed four homes in central Texas, killing a man.
Dave Barkemeyer, county judge of Milam County, said the storm hit a subdivision just outside of the city of Cameron, which is about 60 miles northeast of Austin. County Sheriff David Greene said the twister damaged 10 to 15 homes in all.
Barkemeyer said the man died when his mobile home was destroyed about 4 p.m. Monday. Four other people were injured. No identities have been released.
Also Monday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott flew over parts of the Blanco River flooding, a day after heavy rains pushed the river into surrounding neighborhoods and created huge piles of debris.
Abbott said the flooding had "relentless tsunami-type power." He urged communities downstream to monitor flood levels and take the threat seriously.
The governor added 24 counties to his disaster declaration, bringing the total to 37, most in the eastern half of the state.
Among the worst-affected communities were Wimberley and San Marcos, along the Blanco River in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio.
About 1,000 homes were damaged throughout Hays County. Five police cars were washed away, and the firehouse was flooded, said Kristi Wyatt, a spokesman for San Marcos, a city of about 55,000. The authorities had placed San Marcos and portions of surrounding Hays County under a curfew Sunday evening.
Rivers swelled so quickly that whole communities awoke Sunday surrounded by water. The Blanco crested above 40 feet -- more than triple its flood stage of 13 feet. The river swamped Interstate 35 and forced parts of the busy north-south highway to close. Rescuers used pontoon boats and a helicopter to pull people out.
Hundreds of trees along the Blanco River were uprooted or snapped, and they collected in piles of debris that reached 20 feet high.
Forecasters are predicting continued rain and severe weather across the state through the rest of this week.
Oklahoma tornadoes
A series of tornadoes was reported across eastern Oklahoma on Monday, according to the National Weather Service, whose forecasters warned the state to brace for flooding and more severe weather overnight.
Meteorologist Joe Sellers with the Tulsa office said an unknown number of tornadoes were reported in three southeastern and east-central Oklahoma counties. The Oklahoma tornado warnings had ended by Monday evening.
Spokesman Keli Cain with the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Monday evening no fatalities had been reported from the tornadoes and that there was one person who suffered unspecified injures from storms in Atoka County. She said winds damaged a number of homes in Atoka, Le Flore and Bryan counties.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent said the National Guard was called Monday morning for an air rescue of 10 adults and 3 children at a cabin near the Mountain Fork River in McCurtain County. He said the campers weren't in immediate danger, but access to the cabin is blocked by water, which continued to rise.
Meteorologist Scott Curl with the National Weather Service in Norman said up to 2 inches of additional rainfall is possible across the southern part of the state, and rain is forecast across much of the state nearly every day for the rest of the week. Oklahoma creeks, lakes and rivers continue to be swollen from record downpours.
Oklahoma City set a record Saturday for most rain in any month in recorded history. The metro area has received 18.69 inches so far this month, which easily eclipsed the previous 14.66-inch high set in June 1989.
Most of southern Oklahoma has received 15 to 20 inches of rain during the past 30 days.
Curl said tornadoes, hail and thunderstorms were possible Monday in southern Oklahoma. However, the greatest threat for severe weather are projected winds of up to 80 miles per hour in south central and southeastern Oklahoma, Curl said.
The forecast has first responders ready for additional calls. Cain said communities across the state have requested sandbags to combat further flooding and that flooding and road damage has isolated some rural neighborhoods.
"The last thing people in this situation need are tornadoes or any worse weather," Cain said. "With the ground saturated the way it is, any rain is going to be a problem."
Information for this article was contributed by Seth Robbins, Mark Stevenson, Paul Weber and Allen Reed of The Associated Press and by of Michael Wines of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/26/2015