DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) – The biggest floods in decades threatened Vietnam's central provinces on Wednesday following a powerful typhoon that swept into the country after wreaking havoc in the Philippines.

The government said 38 people had died and 10 were missing in floods and landslides in eight coastal and central highland provinces. River waters in Quang Nam province could reach a level last seen in 1964 by Wednesday evening, weather reports said.

"From the air, one can see many areas around Danang being isolated by floods," a Reuters witness said. "Sea waves pounded the road along Danang's beach and threw several ships onshore."

Typhoon Ketsana (“Ondoy” in the Philippines) slammed into Vietnam late on Tuesday dumping torrential rain across central Vietnam that left 294,000 homes destroyed, damaged or submerged by floods. Around 357,000 people in 10 provinces were evacuated.

The region hit by Ketsana lies far north of Vietnam's Mekong Delta rice basket. Rain dumped on the Central Highlands coffee belt could delay the start of the next coffee harvest by up to 10 days, but exports would not be affected, traders said.

Ketsana had weakened to a tropical storm after moving into Laos and Cambodia on Tuesday night, weather forecasters said.

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai urged authorities to quickly resume power supplies to the typhoon-hit region, including Quang Ngai province where Vietnam's first oil refinery, Dung Quat, was due to reopen on Wednesday after an outage shut the plant's test runs last month.

Scores dead in tsunami in Pacific islands

APIA, Samoa (AP) – A powerful Pacific Ocean earthquake spawned towering tsunami waves that swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa, flooding and flattening villages, killing at least 82 people and leaving dozens missing.

Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors fled to higher ground, where they remained huddled hours after the quake struck early Tuesday.

Signs of devastation were everywhere, with a giant boat washed ashore lying on the edge of a highway.

The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck around dawn about 200 kilometers from Samoa, a South Pacific island nation of about 180,000 people located about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii.

It struck about 190 kilometers from neighboring American Samoa, a US territory of about 65,000 people.

Four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet high roared ashore soon afterward, reaching up to 1.6 kilometers inland, Mike Reynolds, superintendent of the National Park of American Samoa, was quoted as saying.