New fundraising appeal after floods in Bulgaria
The Bulgarian Red Cross has started a new fundraising appeal to help people hit by floods that swept part of the country’s southern Black Sea coast and other places in recent days, leaving three dead and leading to evacuations of more than 1000 people.
This is the latest fundraising appeal by the Bulgarian Red Cross, which in 2014 so far has raised well more than 1.7 million leva to assist people in flood-hit areas in Varna’s Asparouhovo, Dobrich and Veliko Turnovo, and more recently in Mizia and the Vratsa region.
After torrential rains that began at the southern Black Coast on the afternoon of September 4, causing deaths, serious damage to many houses and leading to closures of some major roads, the situation was normalising by the morning of September 7.
According to a September 7 report by public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television, near 80 villages had been affected by the huge amounts of water that drenched them in recent days and hundreds of people had been evacuated.
The head of the country’s directorate of fire safety and population protection, Georgi Ganev, said that within days the cabinet’s consultative council would meet to discuss how to reduce the risk of natural disasters.
In Bourgas on September 7, all official events were starting with a minute of silence for the victims of the floods while September 8 has been declared an official day of mourning in the Black Sea city.
In the Haskovo area, more than 1000 people were evacuated from their homes.
Victims of flooding in the Dimitrovgrad village of Stransko, evacuated from their homes that were under water, spent the night in a kindergarten building. Two buildings in the village were destroyed by the floods.
Reports said that some volunteers had arrived to help, but their numbers were too small to be effective and more people were needed.
In Stara Zagora, rainfall flooded hundreds of homes. Near 100 animals drowned in the village of Sredets. In the Gulubovo, Radnevo and Opan municipalities, people were evacuated from their homes. The wall of the Kozarevets reservoir was breached by the rising waters on September 6.
Some villages in the area had power cuts, reports said.
The mayor of the village of Novo Panicharevo, Yana Zhekova, said that what was most needed was food products, drinking water and warm clothes. She said that the Bulgarian Red Cross had been the first to react, bringing aid packages, while a political party had provided 300 packages with food and mineral water.
The floods at the Black Sea coast’s southern stretches are the latest event in 2014 to prompt a fundraising appeal by the Bulgarian Red Cross.
After the late-June floods, the Bulgarian Red Cross had raised 1.7 million leva, of which by September 2 a sum of 925 846 leva had been provided to Varna, Dobrich and Veliko Turnovo. After the floods that caused deaths and serious damage in the Asparouvo area of Varna, more than 1000 volunteers co-ordinated by the Bulgarian Red Cross assisted in cleaning up the area.
A campaign to raise funds to help people affected by floods in the Vratsa region raised 683 368 leva from August 2 to September 2. A total of 30 000 leva was provided to assist the operation of a field kitchen in Mizia.
To support the Bulgarian Red Cross’s fundraising campaign, a text message may be sent, via all three Bulgarian mobile phone service operators, to short number 1466. Each SMS costs one lev.
The Bulgarian Red Cross is also collecting donations via a special bank account:
UniCredit Bulbank AD
IBAN: BG64UNCR76301078660913
BIC: UNCRBGSF
3 Kaloyan Str., Sofia, 1000 (for the flood victims in the country)
