The quake partly destroyed a local school and a kindergarten, damaged houses and an airport, and in some places disrupted heating and electricity supplies in the village of Tilichiki and three other villages.

According to the officials, the tremor, which struck Friday at 12:25 pm was registered 70 km east of Tilichiki, with the epicenter some 40 km beneath the surface.

'So far no casualties were reported, but dozens of people got minor injuries,' officials said, adding that rescuers were on their way to restore heat and electricity in the damaged villages.

"Until noon (0500 GMT) we have registered 23 dead victims, with most killed in Bendungan subdistrict," the top government official in Trenggalek district, Soeharto, was quoted as saying Thursday.

In hilly Bendungan, 13 people were killed in a landslide that hit three hamlets there after two days of heavy rain, he said according to the report.

Hermanto, who heads operations at the East Java search and rescue agency, told AFP he did not yet have a toll but had sent a team to Trenggalek.

"We are also readying teams from the surrounding districts to help efforts in Trenggalek," Hermanto said.

Flows of water, mud, rocks and other debris swept through Trenggalek district early Thursday and cut the main road linking it to the nearby town of Ponorogo, district spokesman Joko Setiono said, according to Antara.

Setiono said the floods, which hit six subdistricts as well as the district town of Trenggalek, were subsiding. In some areas, the flood had risen as high as two metres (6.6 feet), he said.

Hundreds of houses along with schools and office buildings were hit by the floods after heavy rain swelled the Ngasinan River, Setiono said.

East Java Governor Imam Utomo and other officials toured the worst hit areas to express sympathy to the victims and see what assistance was needed, an official from the province's administration office said.

She said the governor was disbursing financial aid for the families of the dead as well as cash for local officials to buy aid including food.

Waters had already subsided in Trenggalek town by afternoon and the military as well as local officials and residents were busy cleaning up, another local official, Suwanto, told ElShinta radio.

The town's two-storey hospital was innundated, forcing 50 patients to be moved to the second floor, Suwanto said, adding that water had damaged most of the medical equipment.

Flash floods and landslides in Indonesia are not unusual, although monsoon rains typically hit a peak in January.

In February, at least 19 people were killed in Central Java by floods and landslides.

At least 12 people were killed in similar disasters in January on other islands in the archipelago nation, while more than 150 people were also killed on Java in two separate landslides.

Environmental activists have warned of more frequent disasters in Indonesia unless extensive areas are reforested on Java, which has been largely stripped of its original forests.

State climatologist Jay Grymes said he believes the entire region may already be, or soon will be, under extreme conditions if there is no heavy rain.

The culprit is La Nina, an area of cool water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that has pushed the jet stream and the typical west-to-east storm pattern north of southern Louisiana. It has also disrupted normal storm formation in the Gulf of Mexico.

Trouble already is starting for agriculture.

According to the LSU AgCenter, rice fields inundated with salt water from Rita's surge are not getting rinsed out because there hasn't been enough rain. The process had been projected to take at least 18 months even with normal rainfall.

If there is any positive news from the drought, it is in New Orleans, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is trying to repair levees before the June 1 start of the hurricane season.

"Weatherwise, we've done really well," said Corps spokeswoman Kim Gillespie.

To break the drought, Grymes said the state needs a long period of steady rain - not the inches-in-hours downpours that tropical storms and hurricanes bring. Most of that rain quickly washes off into ditches and bayous and does little good, he said.

The forecast into June, however, calls for a 70 to 75 percent chance of normal and below-normal rainfall.

"Normal rainfall is not what we need," Grymes said. "We need a wet spell."

"There's nowhere to put it when there is this much of it," Milos said.

About 10 miles to the north in Spearfish, part of the roof at a Wal-Mart store collapsed Thursday afternoon, apparently under heavy snow. There were no reports of injuries.

Colder overnight temperatures, with lows in the high 20s to low 30s, could help lessen the flood threat by slowing the snow melt, said Col. Dan Mosteller, South Dakota Highway Patrol superintendent.

"It will give the snow a chance to soak in a little bit rather than running off," he said.

In southwestern North Dakota, the town of Bowman recorded about 18 inches of snow, the weather service said.

The potent storm in some areas knocked down trees and power poles. Wind gusting to 84 mph overturned a mobile home in the Nebraska Panhandle, and gusts to 71 mph were reported in eastern Montana, officials said.

The South Dakota Rural Electric Association reported about 2,000 power poles were downed, with trees knocked onto lines and many lines snapped.

More than 5,000 customers remained without power Thursday in the Dakotas.

State officials fully reopened Interstate 90 Thursday morning after clearing about 95 miles of the highway from Gillette, Wyo., to Spearfish, S.D. The road had been closed since early Wednesday.

Four deaths were blamed on the storm, including a utility worker who was electrocuted while working in near whiteout conditions Tuesday night in northwestern North Dakota, authorities said.

Ranchers were concerned about possible losses during calving and lambing season, said Kristi Turman, director of the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management.

"They're getting dug out and getting into their fields and checking their cattle," Turman said. "We don't have an exact number on losses."