Outages, Flooding Follow Dolly in TX

clipped from news.yahoo.com thousands were still without power Thursday and cleanup was ongoing following the Category 2 storm. Officials also warned that Dolly's aftereffects were not necessarily gone for good. Downed power lines remained the greatest danger. One person in Matamoros, Mexico, died from electrocution after walking past a power line on the ground. There will be substantial cleanup: President Bush declared 15 counties in south Texas a disaster area to release federal funding to them, and insurance estimators put the losses at $750 million. But with Dolly long gone, 159,000 people in the region were still without power at 10 p.m. EDT Thursday, according to Gov. Rick Perry's office. The figure was down from 228,000 earlier in the day. An aerial view of the Rio Grande Valley showed fields forming a checkerboard pattern, some inundated with water, others spared. Traffic was moving again in most places, but some residential areas were surrounded by floodwaters and debris was strewn across lawns.

The piece goes on:

Perry, who flew over the area Thursday with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, cautioned residents not to rest easy just yet.

"It appears that we have handled it as well as it can be handled. But it is far from over," Perry said, noting possible flooding over the next five days from runoff as the storm moves northward.

Sen. Cornyn said Dolly should remind the federal government that it needs to fund levee improvements along the Rio Grande.

"We're lucky Mother Nature didn't deal us a harsher blow," Cornyn said.

That's the first time in a long time that I've agreed with John Cornyn.