BC FLOODING 2 QUAKES

Well we see in Story 1 BC flooding and stories 2 and 3 quakes in Indonesia, Russia.

1 feared dead in flooding in southeastern B.C.; more rain forecast Mon May 22, 8:59 PM

ET NELSON, B.C. (CP) - Dozens of people have been forced from their homes as armies of volunteers in British Columbia's West Kootenay region filled a quarter of a million sandbags to stem rising rivers laden by heavy rains and melting snowpacks. Hundreds of other residents of the southeastern B.C. region remained on evacuation alert Monday as officials monitored swollen rivers and creeks in the Passmore and Grand Forks areas.

In Penticton, Joshua Richard Morgan, 21, was missing after being swept away in the raging waters of the city's Ellis Creek. Police say a person with Morgan was unable to help the man due to extremely strong currents and high water levels. Searches on Sunday turned up no sign of Morgan and continued high water levels hampered efforts Monday, said RCMP Const. Dan Moskaluk. In Grand Forks, 19-year-old Julien Faramin's family was one of 40 to be put on evacuation alert as the Kettle River recorded its third-highest flow rate since 1930.

They've cleaned out their basement, which had 10 centimetres of water in it late Sunday morning, and put chairs on tables in anticipation of the water rising. Everyone's (riverfront) backyard is flooding," Faramin said. "It kind of makes me feel on edge. You don't know what to expect. An evacuation alert was issued Friday in the Passmore and Slocan Park areas with 12 people voluntarily leaving their homes.On Saturday, people in 25 households were ordered to abandon their homes in the rural communities.That order was extended to another 28 residences on Sunday.

Regional District of Central Kootenay director Don Munro is among those who have been forced from their homes.About one-third of his property is covered by water from the Little Slocan River. I'm probably the closest house to the river and I've got two gullies going through the property and one of them is probably about one metre from the house,Munro said.The house is on concrete beams so the water could go underneath without going into the house but it could shift the ground if it did. On Monday, Minister of Public Safety John Les flew into the region where 98 homes remain on evacuation alert and 469 are being monitored for flood threat.

If it weren't for the forecasted rain, I think with the somewhat more seasonal temperatures we're experiencing now, there wouldn't be too much need for additional concern, Les told The Canadian Press. But tonight's rain will certainly need to be evaluated as the evening wears on.

The situation remains precarious with the forecast uncertain. If rainfall is at the low end of the forecast, the waters are going to rise a bit more," said B.C.'s chief river forecaster Allan Chapman. The rivers are going to stay high until at least Wednesday.

If rainfall is at the upper end of the forecast," he said, "there's good potential for the Slocan River to go up and possibly surpass the peak it hit over the weekend. We're very carefully monitoring that with all the information we can get.

The Ministry of the Environment issued a flood watch Thursday for much of B.C.'s southern Interior, covering the West Kootenay and East Kootenay, Boundary, Columbia, Okanagan and South Thompson regions. The Passmore fire hall has doubled as a reception centre for displaced families and as a command post where 200 volunteers gathered over the Victoria Day holiday weekend to fill sandbags. A number of local residents have given up a lot of their time over the long weekend to come to the Passmore Fire Hall to help fill sandbags and build dikes in flooded areas," said Regional District of Central Kootenay chairman Gary Wright. In Grand Forks, 27 residences have been sandbagged and 15,000 sandbags have been placed on the banks of the surging Kettle and Granby rivers. A further 1,500 bags were put out to protect the city's well pumps.

Regional District of Kootenay Boundary emergency operations centre spokesman Mike Lo Vecchio said the rivers crested early Monday. Now, he said, the community is looking to the skies as Environment Canada has predicted another 15-25 millimetres of rain. We've continued to sandbag all day, he said. In Fruitvale, 60 kilometres to the east, the community has moved to its back-up water system as an overflowing creek threatened to wash away a water treatment plant. The unprecedented water flow sent gigantic boulders tumbling down a mountainside starting Thursday, along with massive amounts of silt, rock, debris and tree branches.

When it came down it was shaking the (water treatment) building,said Coun. Al Grieve. In Greenwood, city officials have asked residents to conserve water as community wells were threatened by rising creek water. The wells were taken offline so they could be tested and chlorinated.

Strong Earthquake Strikes Indonesia Mon May 22, 10:28 PM ET JAKARTA, Indonesia

- A strong earthquake struck in eastern Indonesian waters early Tuesday, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, meteorological officials said. The epicenter of the 6.0-magnitude quake was 6 miles beneath the Banda Sea, and around 115 miles southwest of Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Arief Akhir, an official at the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta, said that no damage or casualties were reported.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. A 9.1-magnitude earthquake on Dec. 26, 2004, off the coast of Sumatra Island triggered a tsunami that killed more than 131,000 people in nearby Aceh province, and more than 100,000 others in nearly a dozen other countries.

Strong quake hits northeastern Russia Mon May 22, 12:48 PM ET

HONG KONG (AFP) - A severe earthquake estimated to measure 6.7 on the Richter scale struck in the northeastern Pacific coastal area of Russia. The quake struck at 7:21 pm Hong Kong time (1121 GMT) and its epicentre was located some 870 kilometres (540 miles) east of the Siberian city of Magadan, the Hong Kong observatory said Monday.This would put it somewhere in the Bering Sea off Russia's far eastern Kamchatka peninsula.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. A series of violent earthquakes measuring up to 7.9 on the Richter scale shook the Kamchatka penisula's Koryakiya region earlier this month, affecting 12 villages with a total population of 12,000 people.Dozens of people received minor injuries, and hundreds were evacuated from the quake zone. The Kamchatka peninsula, which is about the size of Japan, has a population density of less than one person per square kilometre (0.4 square miles).

In 1952, the region was rocked by an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, the fourth-biggest since 1900, according to data from the US Geological Survey.