Thunderstorms help contain wildfires in Bulgaria
Cooler weather and rain has helped Bulgarian fire-fighters contain the worst of the wildfires that popped all over the country in the past several days, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) reported on August 10.
The forest fire near the town of Belitsa, close to mountain resort Bansko in southwestern Bulgaria, has now been extinguished but nearly 400ha of fir forest has been affected.
Another large fire, in the Sokolna reserve in the Central Balkan mountain range, has been contained thanks to rain, although it was not enough to extinguish all the embers on the 350ha of the forest affected by the fire, BNT said.¬
The wildfire in the Bakadzhik forest near Yambol in southeastern Bulgaria has been contained, but about 200ha of the forest continued to burn. About 70 fire-fighters, forest rangers and military personnel continued to work on extinguishing the fire, BNT said.
The worst fire still raging was one in Haskovo district in the south of the country, near the villages of Dinevo and Malevo, which has spread to cover 250ha.
Over the past 24 hours, the fire-fighting department of the Interior Ministry were called in to deal with 296 fires, extinguishing 237 of them, the Interior Ministry said on August 10.
Despite the worst of the heat wave subsiding, 12 districts in Bulgaria remained still under a “code yellow” hazardous weather alert, this time for potentially dangerous thunderstorms – Vratsa, Pleven, Veliko Turnovo, Gabrovo, Lovech, Sofia, Sofia-city, Pernik, Kyustendil, Pazardzhik, Blagoevgrad and Smolyan.
Over the weekend, daily highs are expected to decline further, with more thunderstorms set to hit the country.
(Photo: Rodolfo Belloli/sxc.hu)
