Texas Closely Watching Hurricane Dean

Water rushes over a sport utility vehicle at a culvert in south San Antonio, Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007. Emergency personnel recovered the body of a man believed to have been in the vehicle several miles downstream. Tropical Storm Erin made landfall northeast of Corpus Christi on Thursday as a tropical depression, bringing torrential downpours to the Houston area before aiming at flood-weary central Texas. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Jerry Lara) (Jerry Lara - AP)

The third Houston victim was a trucker who drowned when his 18-wheeler went into a deep retention pond.

In San Antonio, a 19-year-old man, identified as David Alexander Diaz, was swept away by floodwaters after he got out of his car. His body was found about three miles downstream.

Searchers in Kendall County found the body of one of two people missing after their pickup truck was washed over a bridge and into a creek just as rescuers tried to pull them out, sheriff's Chief Deputy Matt King said. The victim was identified as Juan Ramon Zaragoza, 48. His son, Juan Pablo Zaragoza, 28, was still missing, King said.

Authorities in San Antonio were still searching for a woman who was caught in high water near a mall.

Summer storms have poured record rainfall across Texas and parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, with floods killing 21 people since mid-June. One July storm dropped 17 inches of rain in 24 hours and brought Texas out of a more than decade-long drought.

In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials warned 13,000 families living in FEMA trailers since Katrina that they must evacuate if Dean hits the Gulf Coast.

"Today people in Mississippi don't need to panic, but they need to think," Barbour said Friday.

Barbour said people should think about where they will go if an evacuation is ordered and how they'll travel. He said people should make sure they have fuel, water, and a source of communication if electricity is lost.

"No government is big enough to do everything for everybody," Barbour said.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, the executive of the county that includes Houston, called Erin's rain and flooding "a wet run" for the impending Hurricane Dean.

Hurricane specialists expect this year's Atlantic hurricane season _ June 1 to Nov. 30 _ to be busier than average, with as many as 16 tropical storms, nine of them strengthening into hurricanes. Ten tropical storms developed in the Atlantic last year, but only two made landfall in the United States.

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Associated Press writers Matt Curry, Matt Joyce and Terry Wallace in Dallas; Chris Duncan in Houston; and Betsy Blaney in Lubbock contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/