WIMBERLEY, Texas (AP) — Recovery teams resumed the search Tuesday for 12 people who are missing after a rain-swollen river carried a Texas vacation home off its foundation and slammed it into a bridge downstream.

In Houston, authorities recovered three more bodies from the floodwaters — two of them in the city and a third in a vehicle on Interstate 45. That brings to 11 the number of people killed by the storms in Oklahoma and Texas.

The water rose overnight after the area received about 11 inches of rain, much of it in a six-hour period.

Between 500 and 700 homes in surrounding Harris County have sustained some level of damage, according to county flood control district spokeswoman Kim Jackson.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said officials in the nation's fourth-largest city would be "on the alert" as the bayous rise.

The search for the missing picked up after a holiday weekend of storms dumped record rainfall on the Plains and Midwest.

The worst flooding damage was in Wimberley, a popular tourist town along the Blanco River in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio. That's where the vacation home was swept away.

The Harris County Flood District, which includes Houston, advised residents not leave their homes early Tuesday after the weather service issued a flash flood warning for parts of the county. Before the sun rose Tuesday, emergency crews used helicopters and boats to help residents evacuate their flooded homes in Webberville, some 15 miles east of Austin.

The storm system also produced reports of tornadoes across the state and was blamed for four deaths: a man whose body was pulled from the Blanco; a 14-year-old who was found with his dog in a storm drain; a high school senior who died Saturday after her car was caught in high water; and a man whose mobile home was destroyed by a reported tornado.

 

More From KROC-AM