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PRESIDIO -- Airlifts of massive sandbags for a makeshift dam to protect this West Texas border town from the swollen Rio Grande started Friday afternoon.
The deafening sound of helicopter rotors filled the air as military choppers flew from a patch of desert west of Presidio, down the levee and to a railroad trestle. The helicopter crews were depositing the rotund sandbags as tall as tractor tires at the base of the trestle in hopes of stopping flood waters from reaching the city.
Presidio, a town of about 5,000 nearly 250 miles downriver from El Paso, has been under flood warnings for nearly two weeks as the Rio Grande steadily rose. The river first breached its banks and then filled a channel several hundred feet wide marked a pair of levees on each side of the border.
The flooding broke a levee just east of Presidio earlier this week. The water had covered an 18-hole golf course before overtaking acres of farmland and inching its was toward town.
River levels had held steady overnight and residents reported that flood waters moving toward populated areas had receded, Presidio County Attorney Rod Ponton said Friday morning.
"The good news on the river is that levels seem to have stabilized," Ponton said. "We don't know why that happened, but we're happy."
But the town is far from in the clear after two weeks of watching the river that divides it from Ojinaga, Mexico. The Rio Grande has been on the rise because of heavy rains and the forced release of water from the flood-stricken Luis Leon Reservoir in Mexico.
