We've declared a state of local emergency and with that comes an evacuation order that we issued for all of our residents of Tumbler Ridge due to some fires that are happening within our immediate area, one in bascially close proximity," said Mike Caisley, the town's mayor.

"We wanted to make that decision while we had daylight here as opposed to having to make it in darkness."

The fire, discovered June 29, was about 20 kilometres from the town on Monday morning, the B.C. Forest Service said in an update at the time.

But Caisley said that major shifts in wind had brought fires closer to Tumble Ridge and told CBC News early Tuesday the fire is about 5 km from the town.

Helicopters and fire crews are fighting the four fires, which were caused by lightning and exacerbated by dry conditions.

Shirley Mcleod, one of the evacuees from Stanley Mission, told Press she could barely spend 30 minutes outside her home on Saturday without coughing.

"I wouldn't want to be there right now," Mcleod said Monday. "We're praying for rain so we can go home."

The residents were told to go to the nearby communities of Chetwynd and Dawson Creek and to bring enough clothing and supplies for two or three days, though it is not known how long the evacuation order will last.

John Edwards of Saskatchewan Environment said people and equipment are stretched to the limit, even though aircraft have flown in from Quebec and Ontario and firefighters have come from New Brunswick to join the fight.

A good, heavy rain would help more than anything else, he said. But Environment Canada is predicting hot and sunny weather until Friday, when showers are forecast.

Heavy smoke and some new outbreaks prompted a complete evacuation of the community of Stanley Mission on Monday.

Nearly 600 people left the community on the weekend, said band councillor Brian Hardlotte, but there were still 400 firefighters, health and emergency workers and residents remaining.

The community declared a state of emergency, Edwards said.

Many evacuees are staying at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

Capt. Kirk Green, with the Salvation Army, is co-ordinating volunteers who are helping to prepare and serve food.

He praised the response to the evacuees, saying volunteers are coming to Saskatoon from communities as far as 100 kilometres away.

As of Monday afternoon, about 800 firefighters, backed by helicopters, air tankers and bulldozers, had extinguished 18 fires, leaving 109 burning across the province.

Three of the blazes cover more than 1,000 square kilometres.

The earthquake was a shallow-focus one, with its epicenter being around 110 kilometers from Beijing and about 80 kilometers from Tianjin. So the quake was clearly felt in the two cities, said Zhang Hongwei, a spokesman for the bureau.

But the tremor would not cause any damage to Beijing, Zhang said.

The epicenter of Tuesday's earthquake is located at 38.9 degrees north latitude and 116.3 degrees east longitude in Wen'an county, south of Beijing, according to the SSB.

As of 1:00 p.m. Tuesday, the Chinese seismological network monitored a aftershock measuring 1.6 degrees on the Richter scale.

Experts with the SSB called on citizens to keep calm and handle the emergency situation with the anti-quake knowledge they have learned. Experts also warned citizens not to believe in rumors about earthquakes but to listen to information released by the government.

The SSB has sent a 20-member working group headed by Xiu Jigang, deputy director of SSB, to the quake-affected areas to deal with possible emergency situation.

The earthquake was also felt in elsewhere in Heibei and some parts of neighboring Shanxi and Shandong provinces. No damages and casualties were reported.

Seismological experts of Hebei have rushed to the quake-hit areas to investigate the situation and help deal with the aftermath of the quake.

This month marks the 30th anniversary of an earthquake measuring 7.8 degrees on the Richter Scale that struck Tangshan city, also in Hebei Province, about 200 kilometers east of Beijing, on July 28, 1976. The earthquake left 240,000 people dead, 160,000severely injured and more than 4,000 children orphaned.

China will also commemorate those who were killed in the 1966 earthquakes, that jolted Xingtai prefecture of Hebei province claiming 8,064 lives and injuring more than 38,000 people.

According to the general office of the Wen'an County Committee of the Communist Party of China, as of 12:40 Tuesday noon, six of the county's 12 townships reported the earthquake. No causalities and loss of properties were reported.

A source with the office said possibility of casualties and loss of properties caused by the quake could not be ruled out.

The earthquake shook high-rise buildings in Beijing. Many people having lunch and working at offices felt shaking chairs. Some of them even ran out of the building to shun possible damages that might be caused by the earthquake.

Contrary to people sitting in the office, people walking on the street did not feel the tremor.

A Mr. Li was attending a meeting in a high-rise building in Tianjin, when the earthquake occurred. He said he felt his chair moving back and forth for three times as if somebody was pushing the chair underneath. Li said he also saw a cup on the windowsill shaking for a few seconds.

Xinhua learned from the Tianjin Municipal Seismological Bureau that no damages caused by the quake were reported in the city within an hour following the quake.

The bureau ruled out the possibility of a major earthquake in the city in the near future.

"It's a pretty different mindset to come off 30 years of above-average water levels and to suddenly, since the late 1990s, have below-average levels," said Scott Thieme, chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes Hydraulics and Hydrology Office in Detroit.

Lakes Huron and Michigan, where water levels have declined the most, are down about 3 feet (one meter) from 1997 and about 20 inches from their 140-year average, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

When homeowners on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay noticed wetlands were drying up, the Georgian Bay Association funded a $223,000 report that last year concluded shoreline alterations such as dredging and erosion in the St. Clair River, at the bottom of the lake, were responsible.

In partial response, U.S. and Canadian governments approved funding for a $14.6 million study of the upper Great Lakes by the International Joint Commission, which resolves border disputes and was denied funds for a similar study in 2002.

Depending on what it finds, the commission could recommend changes to the amount of water that flows out of Lake Superior, the first and largest in the chain of lakes.

NATURAL CAUSES?

Water levels in the Great Lakes have always fluctuated, but experts point to climate change, dredging, private shoreline alterations and even lingering effects of glaciers to explain the latest changes -- the decline of Lake Huron and slightly higher water levels in Lake Erie, into which Huron flows.

The most controversial of several dredging projects was in 1962, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deepened the St. Clair River channel by 2 feet to accommodate commercial shipping.

"When they dredge a river, it's like taking a straw and widening it," said hydrologist Cynthia Sellinger, who helped plan the upper Great Lakes study, which begins this summer.

U.S. and Canadian governments approved the 1960s dredging on condition that submerged sills be built to compensate for water lost from Lake Huron, and they started a series of studies.

But by the time the studies were completed in the 1970s, water levels in Lakes Huron and Michigan were at record highs, and no one wanted sills that would raise levels even more.

Experts are unsure why water levels in the upper lakes rose soon after the St. Clair River dredging. But they say that major climatic events usually coincide with changes in water levels.

The 1930s Dust Bowl drought coincided with then-record low levels in the Great Lakes. And the most recent decline was in 1997, when a strong El Nino brought warm, dry temperatures to North America, Sellinger said.

In addition, above-average temperatures since 1998 mean less ice forms on the Great Lakes and the rivers that flow into it, and more water evaporates away, Sellinger said.

And then there is something called post-glacial rebound, or the slow rise of the earth's crust, that could partly explain declining water levels in Lakes Huron and Michigan.

"The area around Georgian Bay (Lake Huron) is rising faster than the area around Lake Erie so it may be that the land has just tilted and more water is flowing out," Sellinger said.

DECLINING REVENUE

For every inch water levels go down, ships bound for destinations outside North America forfeit about $8,400 in freight revenue, said Dennis Mahoney, president of the United States Great Lakes Shipping Association.

Saginaw and other ports have done emergency dredging to accommodate ships and barges that can be hundreds of yards long.

But Lake Superior's largest American ships carried 3,000 fewer short tons of cargo last year than in 1997, when water levels were 12 inches higher, according to the Lake Carriers' Association.

"Obviously water levels are crucially important to this industry, and we have been in a period of decline," said Glen Nekvasil, vice president of corporate communications for the association.

"When you're not utilizing your full vessel capacity you can't give your customer the best freight rate."

At least 22 people died in the states of Orissa and Jharkhand and others were missing in the neighbouring state of West Bengal, officials said in a report from Reuters.

Ten fishermen were presumed dead and thousands lost their homes in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, said the report.

Navy boats and helicopters were being used to distribute food and rescue people trapped on rooftops.

People in Mumbai, formerly called Bombay, were wading through knee-deep water during a second day of monsoon rains. Schools and colleges were shut.

Workers pried open clogged drain covers as the city's ancient drainage system failed to handle the 10 centimetres of rain that fell Tuesday.

Weather specialists say the bad weather is the result of a depression over the east coast.

They warn Mumbai could be in for more rain over the next few days.