Building falls as winds batter the west coast

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A storm packing heavy rain and high winds slammed into the country's already soggy Pacific coast on Wednesday, uprooting trees, disrupting travel and possibly causing a building to collapse.

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The steel frame of a four-storey building under construction in Vancouver collapsed during the storm, but fire officials said all the construction workers escaped injury because they were on a coffee break at the time of the incident.


The metal girders crushed cars in a parking lot next to the construction site and narrowly missed a truck driver.


The cause of the collapse was not immediately known, but a fire department spokesman told local media that the weather was likely a factor.


Winds gusting at more than 100 km/h (62 mph) smashed trees into houses in West Vancouver, forcing officials to evacuate about 30 homes in a subdivision in the wealthy suburb.


The storm forced BC Ferries to cancel most of its sailings. The ships serve as an extension of the provincial highway system, connecting the mainland with Vancouver Island and other smaller islands off the coast.


The Port of Vancouver, Canada's largest, was also forced to idle its container and coal loading operations at its Deltaport facility on Wednesday. The port's other facilities remained in operation, a spokeswoman said.


BC Hydro said as many as 180,000 customers lost power because of the weather. The utility said all of its repair crews and contractors had been called out.


The storm also brought heavy rain to the region, which was still drying out from storms that had caused flooding in southwest British Columbia and western Washington state last week.


Flood warnings were issued for several rivers on eastern Vancouver Island where rain fell at a rate of 10 mm an hour for more than six hours at midday.


Coastal residents on the Island had also been under a tsunami watch for a brief time on Wednesday morning because of an 8.1 magnitude earthquake across the Pacific near Japan.