HOUSTON (AP) - Homeowners dragged soggy carpet to the curb and mopped up coffee-colored muck Wednesday after a barrage of storms and floods in Texas and Oklahoma left at least 19 people dead and a dozen others missing.
More rain fell on the hard-hit Houston area, threatening to complicate the cleanup a day after a downpour of nearly a foot triggered some of the worst flooding the nation's fourth-largest city has ever seen. Hundreds of homes were damaged.
Heavy weather continued in other parts of Texas, with hundreds of people west of Fort Worth told to evacuate along the rising Brazos River and flash flood warnings posted in many areas.
Gadi Shaulsky spent the day cutting wet carpet and padding from his home in Houston's Meyerland section and taking it to the curb. His neighbors were doing the same. A water mark showed up to 6 inches of water had seeped into the home.
"That was just really frightening. It was just flowing in," said Shaulsky's wife, Jodi. With tears in her eyes, she added: "It's hard to wrap your head around all that needs to be done."
Matt Meeks and his wife, Natalie, worked to clean up the resort on the banks of the Blanco that has been in his family for five generations, since the 1920s.
Of the 14 rock cabins at Rio Bonito Resort, probably only five will be salvageable, they said. Two were destroyed and seven appeared structurally unsound.
Meeks' parents own the resort, but he took charge of removing the debris and salvaging the furniture because "they're too emotionally tied to the place to decide what gets junked and what stays."
On the night of the flood, they were able to get all 100 guests out safely after the fire chief called to warn that the river was rising. The river had never gotten so close to the cabins before, Meeks said.
This has been the wettest month on record for Texas, and there are still several days left. The state climatologist's office said Wednesday that Texas has gotten an average of 7.54 inches of rain in May, breaking the old record of 6.66 inches, set in June 2004.
Texas has been hit with almost continuous storms for the past week to 10 days. The wettest area has been from Dallas-Fort Worth to the Red River, where some places have gotten more than 20 inches of rain.
Authorities, meanwhile, defended their telephone and in-person warnings to residents ahead of the bad weather but acknowledged the difficulty in reaching tourists and said a messaging system in Houston is awaiting improvements.
"Nobody was saying, "Get out! Get out! Get out!'" said Brenda Morton of Wimberley. She said year-round residents know the risks, but "people who were visiting or had summer homes, you have company from out of town, you don't know. You don't know when that instant is."
Wimberley saw some of the heaviest damage, including the loss of a two-story vacation home that was swept downstream and slammed into a bridge. Eight people in the home were missing, including three children.
Authorities in surrounding Hays County said the warnings included multiple cellphone alerts and calls to landlines.
The first wave of warnings went to phones of registered users, which could have missed many tourists. But officials said as the danger escalated they used a commercial database that would have delivered a warning to virtually anyone whose cellphone was in range of local towers.
Sheriff's deputies also went along the riverbanks and told people to evacuate, but officials could not say whether those in the washed-away home talked to police.
In Houston, warnings from the National Weather Service were sent to mobile phones, but city officials said they haven't installed a system that would allow them to give residents targeted warnings without the need to register.