By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County and city officials today said they don’t know what caused at least two thunderous booms heard across the city Saturday night.
The loud whumps were heard just after sunset Saturday, spaced about half an hour apart. Residents throughout Del Rio heard the sounds and began calling law enforcement and elected officials.
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. said this morning he began receiving calls and in turn called Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez and County Emergency Management Director Rowland Garza, who in turn began calling contacts in the area.
Owens said county officials reached out to AEP, thinking the sound might have been the results of a transformer or transformers exploding, but Owens said power company officials told him there were no reports of local areas without power.
Pinpointing the source of the sound proved tricky as well, with most who heard it saying it sounded as though it originated in the area of the airport, the Cienegas Terrace neighborhood beyond the airport or even from Ciudad Acuña, Coah., Mexico.
Owens said Garza reached out to emergency management counterparts across the border, but they reported all was calm on their side of the Rio Grande.
Owens said residents of south Del Rio heard the sound, and some Del Rioans living on the north side of the city reported it was so loud it seemed to shake their house.
“We checked with everyone we could think of, and right now, we still don’t know what caused it,” Owens told the 830 Times in a telephone interview.
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