Heavy rain disrupts traffic in Varna, a day after Plovdiv mops up after thunderstorm
Heavy rain disrupted traffic in Varna on June 16, the morning after a river burst its banks to flood 50 houses in the village of Turiya in the Stara Zagora region and after a thunderstorm brought down trees and damaged cars in Bulgaria’s second city Plovdiv.
Local media reported from Varna, the largest city on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, that the rain that inundated several streets caused public transport delays and made some smaller streets impassable.
Several basements in public and private buildings in the city were flooded and firefighting teams were prioritising pumping water out of public buildings, reports said.
Overnight, eight people were evacuated from a building in the Varna city centre because of an electrical fire caused by cables getting wet.
According to a report by Nova Televizia, in the village of Turiya in the Stara Zagora area, streets were turned into rivers and more than 50 houses were flooded, while several people were injured as a high wave of water swept through the village after a nearby river burst its banks.
In Plovdiv, a powerful thunderstorm that struck in the early hours of June 15 flooded streets, underpasses and basements, and brought down several trees, in turn damaging cars and buildings. Among the trees brought down by the storm was one, outside the municipal building in the centre of the city, customarily used as Plovdiv’s official Christmas tree.
Other places flooded included the ground floor of a large private hospital, as well as a fuel station, which has closed for business until further notice because of the flooding.
