Authorities ordered the evacuation of three Andean villages on Tungurahua's slopes on Wednesday after the volcano's crater filled with lava, but many residents were reluctant to leave their homes, said Juan Salazar, mayor of the village of Penipe, 85 miles (135km) south of the capital, Quito.

Rescuers have recovered one body in Penipe and four others are believed to be trapped under the rubble, he said.

Two of those homes were determined to be unsafe to live in because of roof and wall damage.

One man was treated for minor injuries on the scene, but no one was seriously injured.

The white-hot bolt slammed into a towering 40-foot pine tree that had been decaying since Hurricane Charley pummeled it in 2004.

The charge zapped through the root system, and that, combined with pockets of water inside the trunk, caused the tree and roots to explode, carving a 14-foot long trench about 5 inches deep near the tree.

Cape Coral Fire Chief Bill Van Helden said that in his 27 years in fire service, he had "never seen anything like it.

"Here in Florida, we're used to storms and lightning, but it was a very significant event," he said.

"It looked like someone had detonated a bomb in the middle of the neighborhood."

Branches and bark spewed outward in a 500-foot radius, according to city spokeswoman Connie Barron.

"I don't think there was anyone nearby that didn't hear it," she said.

With a terrorist plot in London foiled less than a week ago, several of the residents said they wondered at first whether it might be an attack on native soil.

"The thought crossed my mind," Korean war veteran Richard Charleville said. His home sustained $2,000 worth of damage, mainly to windows and carpeting, which had to be removed when the blast scattered shards of glass across his living room floor.

"It knocked me clear out of bed," he said. "It sounded like somebody tossed a grenade in the house."

The blast could even be heard indoors by those attending the City Council meeting Monday evening at City Hall, 4 miles away.

"We heard it, but we assumed it was just thunder-related," Mayor Eric Feichthaler said. "It wasn't until later we found out it was much more serious."

About 50 fire, police and emergency medical service personnel responded after a 911 call was made at 8:56 p.m. Personnel remained there the entire night.

The department responded to two other lightning strikes Monday night - one on Pine Island Road and another right in the parking lot of City Hall, where an antenna on a news van attracted a lightning bolt. No one was seriously injured in either of those strikes.

According to Vaisala's National Lightning Detection Network, a total of 4,862 strikes were reported in Lee County Monday night.

"It was a very intense lightning storm," Van Helden said. "I think it's just amazing that more people weren't hurt."

He said the main reason people were unharmed was most were indoors at the time.

Emergency crews at Southwest 9th Avenue used the police department's new incident command bus as a headquarters during the aftermath.

From there, emergency workers were able to connect easily with one another and direct aid to the houses that needed it the most.

Three volunteers from the American Red Cross were dispatched too, according to Heidi Ruster, executive director in Lee County. Water and food were served to both residents and emergency workers. They also offered shelter to the residents of two homes that were severely damaged, but both said they had local friends and family who would take them in.

"We respond to some fires that are caused by lightning," Ruster said. "But I think it's safe to say that something like this is pretty rare."

Karen Ryan, spokeswoman for the Lee County Electric Cooperative, said power was restored to most residents in the area almost immediately.

Several city officials, including Feichthaler and Councilwoman Dolores Bertolini, came out to survey the damage Monday evening and Tuesday morning.

"It just frightens me because this could happen to anybody," Bertolini said. "I think the victims are grateful to know that people are there to help them, but I think most of the difficulties lie ahead of them."

Van Helden said the strike highlights the need for residents to cut down dead or dying trees because they can not stand up to storms and lightning as well as live trees.

"Last night is a prime example of why it's necessary," he said.

Thomas Becker of Florida Yards and Neighborhoods agreed, but said residents should never attempt to do it themselves.

"Call a certified arborist," Becker said. "You don't want to compound one tragedy with another."

Six others drowned in four provinces and one died in the Mekong delta province of Dong Thap. The floods also displaced thousands of people, inundated 5,000 houses, submerged nearly 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) of mainly rice and corn crops and also blocked traffic.

"The rains, which in the past weeks have triggered landslides and floods causing human deaths and property damage, are expected to continue in the coming days in the country's north and central north," the National Flood and Storm Prevention Center said in a message on Friday.

The center ordered provincial authorities to move people out of low-lying areas.

More than 1,600 households in the central highland provinces of Dak Nong, Daklak and Lam Dong have been evacuated, the center said. Rice and instant noodles have been sent to the Central Highlands that produces 80 percent of Vietnam's coffee.

Natural disasters, especially floods and storms, kill several hundred people in Vietnam each year, mainly during the storm season between May and October.

This year's rains and floods did not damage the region's coffee crop as coffee trees are planted on higher ground. But rains have delayed several deliveries to Saigon Port as exporters temporarily stopped processing, traders said.

Further to the south, seasonal floods are forecast to rise quickly in the next five days in the Mekong delta rice basket, which generates half of Vietnam's grain output. However, most of the summer-autumn rice crop has been harvested in key growing provinces bordering Cambodia.

But angry residents claimed the death toll could be as high as 1,000 and accused the government of failing to offer adequate warning before the typhoon struck, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported.

Afraid of punishment from superiors, local officials in China have a record of covering up or underplaying bad news on disasters, accidents and epidemics.

But Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief chief under China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, denied any attempts to cover up the scale of the damage.

"Local officials don't have to lie about death tolls from natural disasters as they don't bring them liabilities like coal mine accidents do," Xinhua quoted him as saying on Thursday.

China has the world's most dangerous coal-mining industry and local officials have been accused of colluding with mine owners to conceal fatal accidents which happen on an almost daily basis.

Wang cited China's declassification of natural disaster death tolls as state secrets last year and other "institutional checks" against cover-ups, Xinhua said.

"And given the supervision from relatives of the victims, residents and media, it is also impossible to cover up (death tolls)," Wang was quoted as saying.

"Covering up would be even a graver mistake."

He said poor communications and a growing migrant population hampered an accurate account of disaster casualties.

The overall death toll for Fujian now stood at 241, bringing the total number of people killed by Saomai in China to 330, Xinhua said.

Much of south China has been repeatedly battered by typhoons and tropical storms this year, with nearly 1,000 killed by rainstorms, landslides and other disasters they brought even before Saomai hit.

Local officials in a county in the central province of Hunan, where almost 200 people died in floods triggered by tropical storm Bilis last month, were accused of initially understating the death toll by several times.

"I can confirm 15 casualties in the last 24 hours but the number could be higher as many cases go unreported," said Rizwan Edhi, a senior official of the Edhi Trust, which runs the country's largest ambulance service.

Thunder storms and heavy rain hit across Sindh province but a provincial government spokesman said there were no reports of damage to crops.

"The flood situation is also under control so far," the spokesman said.

Weather officials said more rain was expected in Karachi and across southern Sindh province by Friday evening.

The weather has been warmer than normal in most areas of Japan recently. In particular, the northernmost main island of Hokkaido has seen average temperatures in the past two weeks 2.9 degrees higher than the normal 22 degrees Celsius for August, boosting daily peak electricity demand to record levels in the area.

Temperatures in Hokkaido have risen to almost 33 Celsius (91.4 F), almost matching temperatures in the southernmost main island of Kyushu.

Kyushu's local daily electricity demand has also hit record levels this month, with temperatures rising as high as 35 Celsius (95 F). The average temperature in the past week was 2 degrees higher than the area's average of 27.6 Celsius for August.

The average temperatures in the capital Tokyo, in eastern Japan, was 0.6 degrees higher than the area's normal at 27.1 Celsius (80.8 F) in the past week.

But that may be too little, too late, for states warily watching the weather reports as the nation enters peak hurricane season.

If a hurricane hits North Carolina and another one spins toward Texas, "we would have to make some very difficult decisions," Col. Pat Tennis, the National Guard's director of operations, told the Associated Press.

"Have we thinned the lines? Yes we have. Could we deal with the consequences of another hurricane like Katrina? Yes. Could we deal with two? That would be very challenging," Tennis said.

Guard officials, he said, would have to "look at population densities, what states could volunteer their equipment ... and we would have to travel equipment longer distances in order to meet the emergency."

Tennis' comments come nearly a year after more than 50,000 Guard members from across the country raced to the Gulf Coast to assist in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which destroyed wide swaths of the Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas coasts.

Similar concerns were expressed by Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard. Blum said the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have taken a toll on the Guard's equipment.

"We have to be able to respond even faster here at home than they have to overseas," said Blum, adding that because of agreements between state adjutants general, "we are able to move equipment from other states, to make up for the shortfalls in some states. We have to do that every single day to make the mission work."

According to documents, the Guard has borrowed 3,418 pieces of equipment from the active military, ranging from generators and Humvees to refueling tankers and medical gear.

One Guard document says the states should already have had the equipment as part of their warfighting capabilities, but "due to deployments and stay behind equipment for (Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom), the states are particularly short."

Military units departing Iraq have left hundreds of trucks and Humvees in the war zone, and lost many others due to wear and tear or attacks.

The Army is vowing to spend $21 billion between 2005 and 2011 to buy new equipment for the Guard, including funds to replace hundreds of trucks and trailers. Army spokesman Paul Boyce said there will be a "firewall" around the Guard money to insure the full amount is protected against budget cuts, and he said separate funding for the Reserves will be in the 2007 budget requests.

"We're spread really, really thin. That's a common concern that I hear about," said Maj. Gen. Roger Lempke, president of the Adjutants General Association of the United States. "My concern is having enough equipment to support a major event in a state."

Lempke, who is adjutant general in Nebraska, agreed that multiple crises will be difficult to handle.

"If we get sequential or simultaneous events, it could be a problem. We might not have the equipment we need nearby and we might have to go clear across the country to get it."

He said Guard units in North Carolina and Louisiana, for example, had to leave a lot of equipment, including trucks and Humvees, behind in Iraq and need replacements to meet their training and homeland security needs.

Right now, he said, his home state is borrowing two Black Hawk helicopters from Arizona to help with firefighting, because Nebraska sent eight of its aircraft to Iraq. And those two helicopters, he said, "were vital to saving two towns" in the western region of the state.

According to a budget document dated late last week, the Army and Air National Guard are buying more than 200 five-ton tractors; about 2,000 cargo trucks, and more than $300 million in communications equipment, including about 200 mobile tracking systems. Some of the equipment has been bought, other purchases are not completed.

U.S. Northern Command, which is largely responsible for homeland security, has also bought more mobile communications equipment, and would be ready to move that into a region if needed.

"We just have to keep the process going and keep our fingers crossed in the meantime," said Lempke. "I think they're doing the best they can."

There was no fear of tsunami - huge waves caused by undersea disturbances or volcanic activities - from the temblor, the Meteorological Agency said in a statement.

The quake struck in Russia's Sakhalin province, about 770 miles north of Tokyo, and was centered about 6 miles under the earth's surface, the agency said.