The Idaho Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were testing tissue samples Wednesday, hoping to rule out an avian flu outbreak.

The ducks mysteriously began dying last week around Land Springs Creek, near the remote town of Oakley, about 180 miles southeast of Boise.

Some migratory mallards from Canada and their local cousins were still perishing at the creek Wednesday, staggering and struggling to breathe before collapsing, said Dave Parrish, regional supervisor for Fish and Game.

"I've never seen anything like this in 20 years here," he said. "There were dead mallards everywhere - in the water and on the banks. It was odd, they were in a very small area."

The massive outbreak is vexing scientists because only mallard ducks are dying. Golden eagles, geese, magpies, crows and other birds in the area all remain healthy.

Tissue from the ducks' intestinal tract and water samples from the creek were sent to the Fish and Wildlife Service national laboratory in Wisconsin, the University of Idaho and Washington State University. The agencies expect to review test results Thursday to determine the cause of death.

Mark Drew, a wildlife veterinarian with the state
Department of Agriculture, said the ducks likely were exposed to a single contamination source and gathered at the creek, their mutual roosting point, to die. He did not suspect the mallards were passing a contagious virus.

The ducks may have contracted a bacterial or fungal infection by eating grain treated with pesticides by local cattle farmers, Drew said. Farming chemicals may also have spilled into the small spring-fed creek, which measures just 3- to 6-inches deep.

In addition to Idaho Fish and Game and Homeland Security officers, representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and the local health district were investigating the deaths.

The agencies posted signs warning hunters not to eat any birds killed near the creek.

"I'd say there's no reason for alarm in the sense that literally the sky is falling and there's disease spreading," Drew said. "It's unusual in the number of birds and the sense that it's only mallards, but it's nothing that would cause anyone to panic."

In Volusia, a twister walloped four DeLand-area mobile-home parks -- damaging 100 to 200 homes -- then went on to clobber a Daytona Beach apartment complex, where 200 people were evacuated. Two people were critically injured and five others received minor injuries because of the storm, said EVAC Ambulance spokesman Mark O'Keefe.

"I've heard the damage is widespread and pretty significant," said Volusia County Fire Services spokeswoman Shelley Szafraniec. Search-and-rescue teams were expected to work throughout the night.

About 50 of 65 airplanes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach were damaged when heavy winds threw them against buildings, snapped off wings or caused them to overturn, according to school spokesman Jim Hampton.

Roads were closed in both the DeLand and Daytona Beach areas because of downed power lines and storm debris.

National Weather Service forecasters in Melbourne said they had been expecting the El Nino-influenced deluge. Winds were clocked in some areas at tropical-storm speeds.

"The computer models have been advertising this storm for quite a while," meteorologist Bart Hagemeyer said.

For some Central Floridians, however, the weather was like an unannounced holiday guest who arrives just in time to disrupt dinner.

Carol Izzo of DeLand had just finished taking the Christmas turkey out of the oven when two trees toppled in her yard on North Clara Avenue, near Mercers Fernery Road, hitting her neighbor's home.

"I heard the wind, and it was beating against the front windows and the door. It was like a hurricane," Izzo said. "This has never happened before. . . . We are lucky the house is fine. We all have our lives."

Residents without power, as well as those from the damaged mobile-home parks -- Orangewood, Fernwood, Meadowlea Estates and Rosewood -- were being sheltered at Liberty Independent Baptist Church, 1365 W. Plymouth Ave. Another had been opened at Daytona City Church, 211 Bay St., to house residents with damaged homes and evacuated from Sutton Place apartments.

The storm also dropped trees in Lake County and snapped branches that littered the roadways like tossed Christmas wrappings.

In Leesburg, about a dozen homes and mobile homes were damaged, said Lake County sheriff's spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Mysinger. The brunt of the damage was confined to broken carports and screened porches, but one home in Leesburg near U.S. Highway 441 lost its roof.

There were no reports of injuries in Lake.

And in Osceola, nearly 2,200 residents lost power briefly when heavy rain and gusty winds took out three electrical feeders, said Kissimmee Utility Authority spokesman Chris Gent.

At least three homes were destroyed elsewhere in Florida -- two in Columbia County and one in Pasco -- and dozens more were damaged from what weather-service officials suspect was a tornado. Several people also were hospitalized with minor injuries.

"It's amazing we don't have serious injuries or deaths," Columbia County sheriff's spokeswoman Laurie Windham said. "We are incredibly blessed today."

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service reported 5.58 inches of rainfall at the Tallahassee Regional Airport. That's the most rain reported on Christmas Day since 1897.

Wilbert Hernandez, who lives at the Fernwood Estates mobile-home park in DeLand, had never seen anything like the storm.

He was online, looking for storm information, when a tornado roared through his neighborhood.

"It seemed like a canoe in the ocean for like 10 to 15 seconds of terror. It was unforgettable for me," Hernandez said in Spanish. He spent those seconds hugging his wife and three daughters close, then went outside to survey the damage.

"You couldn't see anything, just pure trash," Hernandez said. "It's something indescribable. I can't tell you how I felt."

The Hernandez family sought help at the Brandywine Shopping Village, where an aid station had been set up.

Myra Durfee, a visitor from Rhode Island, arrived at Brandywine in search of ice. When she saw all the displaced people milling about the parking lot, she knew she needed to help.

Back at the house where she was staying, Durfee said, she commandeered the dinner leftovers, saying, "OK, guys, the turkey sandwiches are gone for the year."

"And we packed up the food and brought it down," Durfee said. "This is the Christmas I'll always remember."

The quakes caused power cuts in Kaohsiung, a port city in south Taiwan.

Although the quake struck south Taiwan, buildings in Taipei in north Taiwan swayed and windows rattled.

Officials have instructed local residents to avoid leaving their houses as particles of volcanic ash hanging in the air could cause poisoning and serious diseases.

Shiveluch, the northernmost active volcano on Kamchatka, is the second to erupt on the Pacific peninsula in two days. Another volcano which has erupted recently is Bezymyanny, which is about 62 miles from Shiveluch.

Experts said the outbursts are not linked as the volcanoes belong to different magma chambers and their almost simultaneous eruptions are a coincidence.

According to experts, there are more than 150 volcanoes on Kamchatka, 29 of them active. Volcano's activity has recently increased on the Kamchatka peninsula.

About 450 minor quakes were registered daily near Karymsky, Kamchatka's most active volcano in the southeast of the peninsula, which rises to 5,039 feet above sea level.

This year more than 1,200 people, including 542 children, were evacuated from the north of Kamchatka after a series of earthquakes. The first 7.8-magnitude quake, the strongest in the north of the peninsula since 1900, injured 31 people on April 21. It also damaged about 380 houses and 25 administrative facilities in four other towns.

Experts from the Moscow International Institute for Earthquake Prediction and Computing Geophysics earlier said there was a 30% probability that an earthquake of more than 7.2 will hit Kamchatka in December.

ut as Thai authorities prepared to open a cemetery for unidentified tsunami victims, foreign donors claimed that nearly $1 million intended for DNA sampling and other testing appears to have been misused.

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off Indonesia's Sumatra Island on Dec. 26, 2004, and spawned monster waves that fanned out across the Indian Ocean at jetliner speeds, killing people in a dozen countries and leaving millions homeless.

On a bright Sunday morning at a mosque in Ulee Lheue, Aceh, the worst- hit Indonesian province, an imam, Usman Dodi, told worshippers the tsunami was a religious warning. "Please forgive the people who have left us for their wrongdoing," Imam Usman prayed, returning to a sermon some religious leaders preached after a disaster that killed 169,000 people in northern Sumatra and left half a million homeless.

Entire villages were swept out to sea in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, luxury resorts and fishing communities submerged in Thailand and thousands of homes destroyed in southern India - where commemorations were small and subdued.

"I cannot forget the events of two years ago, it feels like they happened just yesterday," said an Aceh resident, Zaldi Setiawan.

Like many other Acehnese, he prayed Tuesday at mass graves where tens of thousands of people were buried after the disaster, remembering his two children that were ripped from his hands by the waves. "I can still imagine their faces," he said.

In stark contrast to Aceh, where the disaster led to a landmark peace settlement of a three-decade insurgency, commemorations in rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka were muted.

A resurgence in Sri Lanka's two-decade civil has forced thousands of Tamils, including tsunami survivors, to flee homes and camps for the second time in two years.

"There isn't much to show for by way of reconstruction," said a Western aid official involved in the tsunami relief. "There isn't much to commemorate when you have barely moved an inch.

"The tsunami could have been a turning point in the conflict, if both parties had agreed on an aid-sharing pact. Instead, it has now become another point of division."

Temple bells chimed to mark the exact time the first wave crashed ashore, and all cars and trucks came to a standstill for two minutes. Looking to the future, the first of 100 warning towers was erected on a beach.

The tsunami drill on Indonesia's resort island of Bali - which involved warnings sent from the capital to radios along the beach - was as much about raising awareness as testing technology to mobilize people. Sirens wailed as crowds, many of them schoolchildren, briskly walked inland from the shore, accompanied by Indonesia's minister of research and technology and a handful of foreign tourists.

"The biggest challenge is working with the people to make them aware," said Harald Spahn, a German geologist who is helping Indonesia set up its alert network. "It is a really complex job that many people underestimate."

In Thailand, ceremonies were held along the Andaman coast with Buddhist prayers to remember more than 8,200 killed, many of them foreign vacationers.

The 2004 tsunami generated an unprecedented outpouring of generosity, with donor pledges reaching some $13.6 billion, but many of those made homeless complain they are stuck with poorly built structures that leak, are termite-infested or are located in flood zones.

Corruption has also marred the process, with several nongovernmental organizations forced to delay projects or rebuild homes after contractors and suppliers ran off with the funds.

Thailand faced fresh questions about possible graft on Tuesday. Seven Western nations sent a letter to Thai police saying up to 60 percent of the $1.6 million set aside to help identify the dead appeared to have been misused.

The money may have gone toward travel and other miscellaneous costs, an unnamed U.S. diplomat was quoted as saying in the English-language daily The Nation, calling for an investigation.