Tornado Ravages Sister Cities on Rio Grande

HOUSTON, April 25 — A fierce tornado southwest of San Antonio killed at least 10 people on both sides of the Mexican border Tuesday night, injured many others and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes.
Fear remained Wednesday that the death toll could rise, as more than 500 searchers scoured the rubble in Eagle Pass, a financially struggling city of 22,400, which was pounded along with Piedras Negras, its sister city across the Rio Grande.
At least seven people died in Eagle Pass. Four of them appeared to have been members of one family living in a mobile home struck by the twister, said the Maverick County judge, Jose A. Aranda Jr. The three other dead were killed nearby, Mr. Aranda said.
Mayor Chad Foster said 76 people had been hospitalized, with 32 later discharged. Four of the injured were said to be in critical condition. About 40 homes were destroyed, Mayor Foster said, and 350 people were being put up in shelters.
In Piedras Negras, a city of 200,000, 3 people were killed and 26 injured, 6 of them critically, said Mayor Jesús Mario Flores. Piedras Negras was the scene of a flood three years ago that killed more than 30 people. But the tornado Tuesday night was even more severe in terms of material damage, and Mr. Flores said the Villa de Fuente section had taken the brunt of it. “There are about 300 houses that are completely destroyed” there, the mayor said. “They were wooden houses, and all the roofs are gone.” Two hundred homes suffered lesser damage in another part of the city, he said.
The tornado struck about 6:30 p.m., after heavy hail, and cut a swath of destruction nearly five miles wide.