CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico -- Jose Francisco Contreras and his wife were driving to the bus that he takes to his job at a factory in northern Mexico when the wind picked up and torrential rain began to fall.
They tried to turn around, but their car was lifted by a sudden, howling tornado and flung about 650 feet, landing on its roof in a grassy plaza. Wind-flung bricks and concrete blocks pummeled the vehicle.
"We were spinning around in the air, like four times," Contreras said. His wife, Araceli Alcala, said she "was terrified."
Contreras broke his ankle trying to kick a way out of the car, but both survived the twister that hit Ciudad Acuna and killed 14 people, including a baby boy, and destroyed more than 200 homes.
Coahuila state health officials raised the death toll from 13 to 14 on Wednesday, announcing that a 45-year-old man died in a hospital of complications from injuries suffered during the tornado.
The child's body was found in the rubble of shattered houses in the city across the border from Del Rio, Texas, Ciudad Acuna Mayor Evaristo Perez said Tuesday.
Neighbor Angelica Elizabeth Garcia said the 11-month-old identified as Osvaldo Govea was being dropped off at his grandmother's house when the tornado ripped him and his mother from their car. Garcia spoke after attending a funeral for the boy and two of his relatives. The mother suffered a punctured lung and was in the hospital.
The tornado that touched down early Monday also injured about 300 people and damaged about 800 homes, affecting some 4,000 residents. Some of the houses were reduced to mounds of cinder blocks and rubble, making the search for survivors difficult.
On Tuesday, Gerardo Aguinaga and his sister, Perla Isabel Aguinaga, stood in front of a concrete slab where the family's home and taco business once stood.
The house had been flattened by the storm, and bulldozers were sent in Tuesday to clear the rubble and allow the family to salvage any possessions. Gerardo Aguinaga found only his stepfather's wallet and a pair of mismatched shoes.
"I don't have papers. I don't have anything. There are a lot of people who lost everything," said Perla Isabel Aguinaga. "We have no place to live."
Their stepfather, Edgar Gerardo Gonzalez, 37; their mother, Alma Isabel Galindo Chavez; and Perla Isabel Aguinaga's 5-year-old son, Bryan, were in the house when the twister hit.
Galindo and Bryan hid under a bed as the building collapsed around them. The family's truck ended up on the roof of a nearby house. Galindo survived with back injuries and bruises, and Bryan suffered gashes in his head.
The stepfather was standing at the back of the house, where a wall fell on him, seriously injuring him. Despite his injuries, the stepfather dug himself out, rescued his wife and the boy, and took them to a neighbor's house.
"Whenever I close my eyes, I see what happened," Galindo said Tuesday.
Four adjacent houses also were flattened. In several, the only areas left standing were the bathrooms, where Mexican authorities advise people to take shelter during storms.
President Enrique Pena Nieto toured the area to survey damage and help coordinate rescue efforts. Bulldozers and cranes moved rubble, fallen light posts and crumpled cars.
Questions began to center on the lack of any warning system. Tornadoes are infrequent in Mexico, and officials said this one struck too quickly to give much of a warning.
The previous major tornado hit southeast of Ciudad Acuna in 2007 in the border city of Piedras Negras, across from Eagle Pass, Texas, killing three people.
After escaping from their car Monday, Contreras rested on the ground until some people in a truck showed up to take him and his wife home. On Tuesday, he sat with a cast on his ankle outside their now-windowless house.
He hasn't gone back to see the car, but his wife did.
"It was totally crushed," she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Stevenson of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/28/2015