Residents along the coast boarded up their homes and businesses and headed for higher ground. There were no reports of deaths or serious injuries.

Emily lost power as it moved over land and dropped to a tropical storm later on Wednesday with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph (113 kph), but forecasters said it could cause chaos in the mountains of northeastern Mexico as it dumps torrential rain.

"It is going to be a very dangerous situation. We could easily see 15 inches (38 cm) of rain in some mountains areas and that will cause flash floods and mudslides," said Stacy Stewart of the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.

In the town of San Fernando near the US border, some homes were severely damaged when the eye of the storm tore through.

Hurricane veterans were surprised by Emily's force.

"I have seen lots but this one is very bad. My little house was flooded with water," said Cristina Santiago, 77, at a shelter.

More than 700 people crowded into the shelter. Wind howled outside and rain lashed against wooden planking over the windows.

By Wednesday afternoon, Emily was 80 miles (129 km) southeast of Monterrey, Mexico, a major industrial city.

Big waves and winds of up to 60 mph (100 kph) on the outer edge of the storm pounded the south Texas coastline and 27,000 homes and businesses were without power in the state.

TEXAS TORNADOES

Emily triggered about 10 tornadoes in Texas, mostly near Corpus Christi and Alice, but there were no reports of injuries.

"Essentially we're looking at a lot of wind damage, a lot of power lines down, some roofs that appear to have been removed and also some minor wall damage," Cameron County emergency office spokesman Remy Garza said."

"Things could have been much worse," he said.

About 4,000 people spent the night in emergency shelters in and around the Texas border city of Brownsville.

In Mexico's Tamaulipas state, at least 17,000 people were evacuated to shelters, mainly from small fishing communities along the coast. Many fretted over the fate of their modest corrugated iron homes.

Only four rain-soaked dogs roamed the abandoned streets of the fishing town of La Pesca. Residents had fled for shelter at a nearby naval base.

Over 1,000 nests of endangered sea turtles, each with dozens of eggs inside, survived the storm, due to conservationists who fortified the nesting beaches with sandbags and put most of the nests into boxes to protect them.

"They are on the dry side of the hurricane. There's no damage to the nesting beach," said Pat Burchfield, deputy director of Brownsville's Gladys Porter Zoo, who works with Mexican and US groups to protect the Kemp's Ridley turtles, among the most endangered in the world.

It was the second time Emily battered Mexico. On Monday, it crashed into the Caribbean coast, sending tens of thousands of tourists and locals to shelters in beach resorts in and around the vacation mecca of Cancun.

Emily killed five people in Jamaica in its swing through the Caribbean as a Category 4 hurricane, and several people died in Mexico in incidents indirectly caused by the storm.