Texan Officials 'Lean Into' Hurricane Demands

July 23, 2008— -- Hurricane Dolly, recently downgraded to a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of 95 miles per hour, continued to pound the Texas coast while officials prepare for emergency and recovery operations.

Dolly slowed as its 15-mile-wide eye neared the Texas coast early this morning and has maintained its torrential, devastating winds and rain.

While coastal areas are in danger of flooding due to tides that are expected to be up to seven feet higher than normal, towns in the Rio Grand Valley are also in peril as unrelenting rainfall could topple protective levees.

Despite the dangers, in a press conference today Texas Gov. Rick Perry was optimistic about the state's ability to deal with the disaster.

"These hurricanes can be highly unpredictable. We prepare for the worst and pray for the best," he said. "This is Texas. Our approach is to lean into these problems."

Perry explained that the state's preparations "kicked into high gear" as early as Sunday afternoon when Dolly, then a tropical storm, was believed to be a threat and resources were placed where the storm was expected to come ashore.

Perry issued disaster declarations for 14 counties in southern Texas. In response, the state has established 17 local shelters that currently house nearly 3,000 people.

Despite Perry's insistence that in Texas officials "believe in local control of these emergency situations," the Federal Emergency Management Agency held a press conference today along with several organizational partners to outline their own disaster preparations.

Over 1,000 National Guard troops have been activated in the area as a precaution for levee breaches in the Rio Grande Valley. The Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard have been in contact with their counterparts in Mexico to streamline possible cooperative emergency actions, according to officials at a press conference.

Rainfall expectations, which have lowered from as high as 15 inches to around 10 inches, according to FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson, still pose a serious threat to the levees.

"The levees are not going to hold that much water," Cameron County Emergency Management Coordinator Johnny Cavazos told The Associated Press.

Bill Irwin of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also spoke at the press conference and explained that the main levee system in the Rio Grande Valley is actually controlled by a joint U.S.-Mexican organization, the International Boundary and Water Commission, which employs its own engineers capable of responding to the crisis.

According to Irwin, there are no other large protective levees in the endangered areas.

"There are small flood control works in the area," he said, "but none protecting large populations."

For all their preparations, many of FEMA's officials are in stand-by mode, however, as "the state of Texas has no gaps and no specific requests for federal support," Johnson said.

One federal agency that is not on stand-by as the storm batters the coast is the department of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

During the FEMA news conference, Deputy Commissioner of the CBP Jayson Ahern announced that today customs officials made three unrelated seizures at the same checkpoint on the Texas-Mexico border.

Officials stopped two attempts to smuggle illegal immigrants into America and another to bring in an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 pounds of marijuana.

According to Ahern, "criminal enterprises" may be trying to exploit these "tragic circumstances" to take advantage of distracted officials. As the seizures show, however, U.S. officials are not too distracted to leave borders unsecure.

"We do not want to open up a pathway for criminal organizations to further their enterprise," Ahern said. "We're still operational."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.