SEVERAL days of heavy rain led to extensive damage and the declaration of states of emergency in various parts of Bulgaria, including the capital Sofia.
After a few brief sunny days following the relatively high rainfall in May and early June – a respite that gave villages and towns in northern Bulgaria a chance to recover – torrential rain hit many areas from June 6 onwards.
Crop damage in some areas led to media reports that prices of some foods could go up.
The heavy and continuous rains in Western Bulgaria throughout the night of June 6 and early June 7 caused floods in some areas of Sofia. Pernik was especially hard hit. Swollen rivers overflowed and flooded roads, homes, yards and underpasses.
A landslide temporarily closed the Sofia ring road, the Iskar river came close to flooding the railway between Sofia and Vidin, which was temporarily closed because of fallen trees between the Vlado Trichkov and Rebrovo train stations.
In Sofia homes and basements were flooded in the Nadezhda, Obelya, Benkovski, Novi Iskar, Lyulin, Knyazhevo, Vrubnitsa, Bozhurishte, Izgrev, Dragalevtsi and Orlandovtsi areas.
The ground floor of the St Naum psychiatric hospital in the Izgrev area was flooded. Another psychiatric hospital, in Kurilo near the Iskar River, was flooded and some patients were evacuated to other hospitals by armoured personnel carriers.
In Pernik, the Struma River overflowed, flooding the Iztok, Humni Dol, Pashov, Dimova Mahala areas, and streets in several nearby villages.
The Civil Protection Agency (CPA) and firefighter brigades organised monitoring teams, built sandbag dykes and pumped water from buildings.
Sofia municipality set up a crisis headquarters in the city, headed by mayor Stefan Sofianski, who suspended his election campaign trips across the country.
The situation along the Iskar river valley got out of hand when a two-metre tidal wave rushed down the river, flooding roads, homes, yards and the railway from Sofia to Vidin and Varna.
This caused delays in domestic and international train schedules.
According to preliminary data, wheat fields were badly affected. Nearly 60 000 decares were laid waste by floods or hailstorms. Almost 30 000 decares of maize crops were destroyed.
This data does not include damage in Western Bulgaria.
By order of Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, the Permanent Commission on Disasters was given an additional eight million leva, bringing the disaster fund to a total 25.5 million leva.
According to the CPC and the weather forecasting service, further torrential rains and hailstorms were to be expected before June 10.