Vietnam fights floods after typhoon, toll hits 40

By Nguyen Van Vinh

HOI AN, Vietnam (Reuters) - Vietnam's central provinces battled the biggest floods in decades on Wednesday caused by a powerful typhoon that swept into the country after wreaking havoc in the Philippines.

Government reports said torrential rains from Typhoon Ketsana, which swept into Vietnam late on Tuesday, killed 40 people and left 10 missing from floods and landslides in nine coastal and central highland provinces.

Ketsana hit the Philippines at the weekend, killing 246 people, leaving another 42 missing, and causing damages totaling more than $100 million, officials said.

Weather reports said that by late on Wednesday rivers in Vietnam's Quang Nam province could reach a level last seen in 1964.

The typhoon spared most of Daklak, Vietnam's top coffee-growing province, and officials were still assessing coffee and rubber trees in Gia Lai, the third-largest coffee grower, state-run Vietnam Television said.

Floodwaters had submerging some old houses in Quang Nam's Hoi An city, a UNESCO-recognized World Heritage site, where people had to move around by boat.

"We have had storms or flooding in the past, but this time we have both of them," Le Xuan Toan, a 45-year-old Hoi An resident, told Reuters while sitting on the roof of his submerged house.

Foreign tourists who took shelter in state buildings in Hoi An when the typhoon made landfall returned to hotels on Wednesday and some helped clean up the streets.