MSNBC News Services
updated 9 minutes ago

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Hurricane Dolly strengthened early Wednesday to a Category 2 storm as its leading edge lashed the Gulf Coast near the Texas-Mexico border with heavy rain and powerful winds.

Sections of the roof of a South Padre Island apartment complex collapsed as the storm approached. Residents told The Associated Press they did not believe anybody was injured, but there was no immediate information available from emergency officials.

Shortly before the reported collapse, Dan Quandt, a spokesman for the town’s emergency operations, said winds were picking up to about 50 mph and were expected to increase later Wednesday morning. He said there was a steady rain falling, but no reports of flooding. A hotel sign blew off, but no one was injured and it did not pose a hazard, he said.
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Meanwhile, Houston Ship Channel pilots stopped steering ships along the waterway to the busiest U.S. petrochemical port due to the rough weather, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

“We are a little ways from Brownsville, but still in South Texas on Highway 59.  The weather here is ominous: It's like Mother Nature is getting ready to run at us and hit us hard,” Claire Fletcher of Beeville, Texas, wrote into msnbc.com’s FirstPerson form. “We've gone from hurricane watch, to hurricane warning, and we're waiting for the hurricane viewing.”

Levees under pressure
The center of hurricane was expected to make landfall later Wednesday and dump up to 15 inches of rain, threatening flooding that could breach levees in the heavily populated Rio Grande valley.

Dolly, upgraded from a tropical storm Tuesday, had sustained winds of 100 mph. At 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, the storm’s center was about 30 miles east-northeast of Brownsville, moving northwest at about 8 mph.

Utility company AEP Texas reported power outages to more than 9,200 customers in Cameron County. The causeway linking South Padre Island to the mainland remained closed early Wednesday.

Stephen Murphy, who runs his family's dolphin watching and fishing business in South Padre Island,  planned to ride out the storm from his boat.

"You gotta try to save your boat," Murphy, 41, told msnbc.com from his 66-foot boat in Sea Ranch Marina on the island. “It’s very seasonal down here. You got three months to make money and if your boat gets a hole in it or the wind shifts and it sinks down to the bottom, then you’re basically bankrupt.”

Murphy and his girlfriend, Lisa Graves, had been on the boat since Tuesday afternoon, boarding it up and preparing for the storm.

"Yesterday morning we were told it was only going to be 80 miles per hour, but I hear now that it’s 115," Murphy said. His 59-ton boat, named Murphy's Law, couldn’t be hauled out of the marina, he said, because it was too big for the local lift.

"It’s blowing horrible," he said. "But you don’t want to leave the boats."

Texas officials urged residents to move away from the Rio Grande levees because if Dolly continues to follow the same path as 1967’s Hurricane Beulah, “the levees are not going to hold that much water,” said Cameron County Emergency Management Coordinator Johnny Cavazos.

Mexican soldiers were making a last-minute attempt to rescue people at the mouth of the Rio Grande. They’ve been using an inflatable raft to rescue at least one family trapped in their home.

Charles Hoskins, deputy emergency management officer for Cameron County, said there were nearly 2,000 people in six shelters in the county.  In Hidalgo County, a little bit farther inland, six shelters holding about 900 people are open. People living in low-lying areas are being encouraged to come to shelters.

Evacuations in Mexico
In Mexico, Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez said officials planned to evacuate 23,000 people to government shelters in Matamoros, Soto La Marina and San Fernando.

The U.S. Census Bureau said that based on Dolly’s projected path, about 1.5 million Texans could feel the storm’s effects.

Tropical storm warnings were issued for areas adjacent to the hurricane zone, and Gov. Rick Perry declared 14 south Texas counties disaster areas, allowing state resources to be used to send equipment and emergency workers to areas in the storm’s path.

'Triple-decker problem'
The storm, combined with levees that have deteriorated in the 41 years since Beulah swept up the Rio Grande, pose a major flooding threat to low-lying counties along the border. Beulah spawned more than 100 tornadoes across Texas and dumped 36 inches of rain in some parts of south Texas, killing 58 people and causing more than $1 billion damage.

“We could have a triple-decker problem here,” Cavazos told a meeting of more than 100 county and local officials Tuesday. “We believe that those (levees) will be breached if it continues on the same track. So please stay away from those levees.”

Around Brownsville, levees protect the historic downtown as well as preserved buildings that were formerly part of Fort Brown on the University of Texas at Brownsville campus. Outside the city, agricultural land dominates the banks of the Rio Grande, but thousands of people live in low-lying colonias, often poor subdivisions built without water and sewer utilities.

The International Boundary and Water Commission, which operates a series of levees, dams and floodways in the lower Rio Grande Valley, put its personnel on standby alert. If needed, the IBWC will begin patrolling the levees around the clock looking for seepage and erosion, said spokeswoman Sally Spener.

The IBWC made significant improvements to the levee system after Beulah and its studies showed that a 100-year flood in Cameron County would not top the levees, Spener said. Levees upstream in Hidalgo County are in the midst of improvements, but the river could spill over sections in a 100-year flood, a flood so big that it has only a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year.

Much of the damage to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina was from levee breaks instead of wind.

Navy aircraft relocated
The Navy began flying 104 of its aircraft out of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi to bases inland. Other aircraft will be sheltered on base in hangars and no evacuation was planned.

Maj. Jose Rivera of the Texas Army National Guard said troops were preparing at armories in Houston, Austin and San Antonio, after Gov. Perry called up 1,200 Guard members to help.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement was evacuating its Port Isabel Detention Center, said spokeswoman Nina Pruneda. Fewer than 1,000 people were being sent to other detention centers in Texas.

Oil rig evacuations
In the Gulf of Mexico, Shell Oil evacuated workers from oil rigs, but said it didn’t expect production to be affected. It also secured wells and shut down production in the Rio Grande Valley, where it primarily deals in natural gas.

Mexico’s state-run oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, said it had evacuated 66 workers from an oil platform off the coast of the port city of Tampico. Pemex said in a statement that it had readied a team and the resources needed in case of damage to oil installations in the region.

Residents of northern Mexico were taking the impending storm in stride.

Blas Garica, a 62-year-old builder in Reynosa, was taping up his windows and putting sandbags in front of his porch to prepare.

“I’m not afraid because we flood frequently around here,” he said. “If my house floods, we’ll just run to the roof.”