BROWNSVILLE, Texas--Thousands of coastal residents from Mexico to Louisiana fled to higher ground yesterday as fierce Hurricane Gilbert sent the first of its storms against Texas after thrashing the Yucatan Peninsula.

"This is a killer storm," said Gordon Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency of Management. "I feel sorry for anybody wherever this hits."

The death toll from the storm's onslaught through the Caribbean islands and the Yucatan was at least 36, and estimates of the damage have reached $8 billion.

By early yesterday evening, the first thunderstorms and showers in the outermost spiral bands of the storm had reached southeast Texas, forecasters said.

Texas Gov. Bill Clements issued an emergency proclamation allowing local authorities to suspend laws "to preserve the health, safety and welfare of the public," including such things as the direction of travel on highways.

Grocery stores ran low on bottled water, batteries, canned tuna and bread as people laid in supplies. Homeowners covered windows and doors with plywood and shatter-proofing hurricane tape. Offshore oil workers left their rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, said the 450-mile wide storm would likely make landfall this afternoon along the northern coast of Mexico or southern Texas.

In Brownsville, Texas' southern-most city, winds began to pick up around noon under overcast skies.

Lorena Curry, who has lived in Brownsville since 1935, said she plans to ride out the storm. "I've been through them before. I'm going to stick around at my home."

At 6 p.m. EDT yesterday, the storm center was about 340 miles southeast of Brownsville, moving west-northwest at about 15 mph and dumping about 10 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather service issued a hurricane warning for Mexico's northern coast and the southern half of the 370-mile Texas coast from Brownsville to Port O'Connor, including 250,000-resident Corpus Christi. A hurricane watch remained in effect for the remainder of the Texas coast, from Port O'Connor north to Port Arthur near the Louisiana border.

The weather service said warnings might be extended northward, depending upon Gilbert's path.

Gilbert surged into the gulf after battering the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico with 160 mph winds, forcing tens of thousands to flee.

After crossing the peninsula, Gilbert's winds weakened to 120 mph, but forecasters predicted the storm would intensify again as it moves over open water.

"The shower and thunderstorm activity that we see taking place around the hurricane itself is getting better organized, more vigorous, so we think it's starting to strengthen," said Sheets at the Hurricane Center.