Bulgaria to test BG-Alert, civil defence sirens on October 1

Bulgaria’s civil defence siren and voice announcement system and the BG-Alert system – which sends text messages to mobile phones – will be tested on October 1 at 11am, the Interior Ministry’s firefighting and civil defence directorate said on September 25.

According to the directorate, the two systems will be tested “in order to check their technical condition and train the public to recognise the signals and messages”.

The test of the siren and loudspeaker system, including alerts and the all clear, will take place in Sofia, Bourgas, Varna, Kurdzhali, Montana, Pazardzhik, Pleven, Plovdiv, Rousse, Smolyan, Vratsa, Stara Zagora, in municipalities in the Vidin, Pernik and Yambol districts and in settlements in a 30km zone around the Kozloduy nuclear power station.

During the test of the BG-Alert System, a message containing text in Bulgarian and English will be distributed to mobile devices of citizens throughout the country, the statement said.

The message will be received once, accompanied by a specific sound and/or vibration. Test messages from BG-Alert are manageable and can be enabled/disabled by users.

Detailed information on setting up your device can be found at https://bg-alert.bg/#/help/phone-settings.

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