HANOI, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's central region is making preparations for coping with potential floods and landslides caused by a recent tropical depression and a cold spell.

Central provinces are ready to evacuate local people in flood or landslide-prone areas, and release water in important reservoirs, which are now full of water due to heavy rain over the past few days, Vietnam's Central Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control said on Monday.

By early Monday morning, 21 small reservoirs of hydroelectric plants and some reservoirs of irrigation works in the central region and the central highlands region had released water.

The central region currently has 2,421 irrigation reservoirs, including 61 important ones.

Heavy rain and whirlwinds over the past two days have destroyed five houses, damaged 203 others, uprooted 519 trees, and damaged over 100 hectares of crops in the southern region, and lifted water levels of many rivers in the central region.

Natural disasters, mostly flash floods and landslides, in Vietnam killed or left 245 local people missing in the first 10 months of this year, said the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

The disasters also destroyed over 4,600 houses, and damaged crops and many infrastructure works, including roads, bridges and dykes, causing property losses of more than 36,500 billion Vietnamese dong (over 1.6 billion U.S. dollars).