Lorriane Clenehan woke Saturday to find the surf pounding at the door of her Boundary Bay home.

"The waves were coming about 30 or 40 feet high over the seawall, halfway down my yard, which is like 200 feet deep, and then going over the hedge and into the farmer's field next door," she said.

About 200 people were told to leave their homes and Delta Mayor Lois Jackson declared a state of emergency. At the height of the storm, about 50 residents actually left their homes.

"[The storm surge] absolutely slammed against everything that was in sight," Jackson said. "And, of course, the water just roared through everything. It was a very powerful storm."

By Sunday morning, the wind had died down and Jackson described the high tide as "manageable," with the help of fire crews and their pumps.

Vancouver Island was also hit hard and several ferry runs were cancelled.

Last Tuesday, another windstorm battered the island, knocking out power to about 50,000 homes and businesses.

Saturday's storm was even worse in Washington State. At its height, nearly 200,000 homes and businesses were without power. It would be late Sunday before all the power is restored, officials in the state said.

South of Kingston, Wash., the tides and winds were strong enough to knock one house off its foundation.

Amtrak train service between Vancouver and Seattle was to be suspended for the weekend while crews assess damage to tracks from flooding. There was also a mudslide over the tracks north of Seattle.

The provincial utility said electricity had been restored to about half the customers by late evening.

A Hydro One spokesperson warned that service in some areas might not be restored until Monday.

Some people had been without power since 6 p.m. EST Saturday, amid temperatures that dropped to about –4 C in many areas.

The province's electricity distribution utility, Hydro One, said its teams were racing to restore power.

"We've got our restoration process in full gear," Hydro One official Al Manchee said.

"We're pulling out all the stops."

Hydro One blamed the outages on high winds and wet snow on Saturday that knocked down trees and felled power lines in western, southern and central areas of the province.

Owen Sound, Parry Sound, Penetanguishene and London were among the communities that reported disruptions.

Hydro One officials said strong winds were continuing to hinder their efforts to restore power in some communities on the Bruce Peninsula and around Georgian Bay.

It wasn't the only area in the country to take a pounding from Mother Nature on the weekend.

More than 50,000 people in southwestern B.C. lost power on Saturday after a windstorm knocked down lines and sent sea water pouring into homes.

It was felt by residents in Lima, Virginia City, West Yellowstone, as far away as Helena as well as in Ashton and St. Anthony in Idaho and Jackson and Wilson in Wyoming, according to reports submitted to the USGS Web site Saturday night.

The National Weather Service said no damage was immediately reported.

The epicentre of the quake was 195km from Nias and 574km southwest of Penang, the department said in a statement here.

Meanwhile, the department said that the moderate and occasionally heavy rain in several places in Sandakan, the west coast and Kudat in Sabah would continue until early tonight.

Such conditions could cause flash floods and landslides at low-lying areas, hillslopes and river banks, it said.

It also reported that intermittent and occasionally moderate rain was expected in Tawau, Kudat, West Coast and Sandakan from Wednesday to Saturday.

It was followed by two aftershocks of magnitude 5.0 within three minutes of each other, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. A magnitude 5.3 aftershock followed at 3:10 p.m.

The temblors came the same day that the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that it will use the equivalent of $81.6 million from the supplementary budget for fiscal 2005 mainly to help rebuild condominiums that were built on false earthquake-resistance data and are vulnerable to major temblors.

The total includes $27.7 million to be allocated to the Tokyo metropolitan government and $16.8 million to the Kanagawa prefectural government. In Tokyo and Kanagawa prefecture, 10 defective condos are to be demolished and rebuilt.
The ministry will also spend $21.9 million to finance work by local authorities to check quake-resistance capabilities of condominiums in 21 prefectures in response to growing concern among condo owners about their apartments' anti-quake capacity, the officials said.

The ministry will give $8.4 million to the Urban Renaissance Agency, a state-run property developer, to help finance its inspections of buildings' quake-resistance capabilities.

The land ministry will also provide $10 million to the Japan Building Disaster Prevention Association, a ministry-linked organization formed by architects' groups and construction business bodies, to help it conduct a quake-resistance survey of 500 condominiums to be picked at random from across the country.

The association will complete the survey by March 31, 2007, after picking the condos from among those built within the past five years.

The government has moved to support condo owners since the revelations last November of a number of quake-susceptible condos and budget hotels built on fabricated quake-resistance data.

The land ministry said the quake-resistance data of 97 buildings in 18 prefectures was fabricated by disqualified architect Hidetsugu Aneha.
On Friday, the Diet passed the extra budget for fiscal 2005 that ends this March 31

Less than four months ago, an earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir and adjoining North West Frontier Province killed more than 87,000 people.

And this weekend, a strong magnitude 6.0 earthquake shook India's Andaman Islands early on Saturday, the USGS said. There were no immediate reports of damage on the islands, which were hit badly by the December 2004 tsunami, which was triggered by a massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island.