NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AFP) - One person was killed as storm Dolly dumped rain over Texas and Mexico on Thursday after pummeling the coast as a hurricane and threatening to trigger more floods even as it weakened into a tropical depression.

The Gulf of Mexico's first hurricane of the season ripped off rooftops, shattered windows, toppled trees and power lines and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated damage, but the storm surge did not cause any breach in south Texas levees as some authorities had feared.

The storm caused extensive flooding in Mexico's northeastern border city of Matamoros, where tens of thousands of people were left without power and drinking water. One person was found dead electrocuted, officials said.

Dolly's winds damaged the city's main water treatment plant, leaving half of the 500,000 inhabitants without drinking water.

Nuevo Laredo, which is also near the US border, was bracing for possible flooding from Dolly's heavy rain.

The storm's sustained winds deflated to 35 miles per hour (56 kilometers per hour) Thursday afternoon as it was downgraded to a tropical depression, according to the US National Hurricane Center.

Despite the downgrade Dolly was expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of eight to 12 inches over parts of south Texas and northeast Mexico, the center said, adding that the rain was "very likely to cause widespread flooding."

Dolly had slammed into the Texas-Mexico border region Wednesday as a category two hurricane with 100 mph (160 kph) winds.

The storm dumped heavy rain and left more than 200,000 homes in south Texas without power early Thursday, the San Antonio Express-News reported on its website.

A 17-year-old boy broke several bones when the gusts knocked him out of a seven-story building, US media reported.

Texas Governor Rick Perry declared a disaster situation in 15 counties across the southern portion of the state, deploying hundreds of National Guard troops and other emergency crews, local media said.

Jacqueline Bell, who lives on South Padre Island where Dolly made landfall midday Wednesday, told CNN the wind had blasted the roof off her neighbor's home.

"When we heard the first bang, I thought it was one of the air conditioners flying ... and then we went outside and we saw the debris," Bell said.

The river level in Brownsville, Texas rose steadily but the older levees in the Rio Grande Valley withstood the waters, after some officials had voiced concern that the levees could be overwhelmed.

"Everything is in good shape. We are not experiencing flood conditions in the Rio Grande today," Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, told AFP.

"We do not expect water to be high enough to pose any threat to the levees," she said.

Due to dangers posed by the continuing rain, dangling power lines and high waters in some parts of south Texas, authorities urged residents to limit their activities as much as possible.

Initial damage estimates from the storm by risk-modeling service provider AIR Worldwide Corporation varied between 300 million and 1.2 billion dollars in the United States, and less than a quarter of those amounts in Mexico.

The NHC has forecast an especially active 2008 weather season, saying there could be up to nine hurricanes and 12 tropical storms in the Atlantic region. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through the end of November.

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