State of emergency declared in Pleven after severe storm

A state of emergency has been declared in Pleven, central Northern Bulgaria. A powerful storm led to flooding of basements and ground floors. Lightning has also fallen. More than 60 alerts have been submitted.

Heavy rain accompanied by wind and hail caused damage in Pleven.

There are fallen trees, damaged pavement, flooded ground floors, there were stranded cars and places with power outages.

There are no reports of injured people. Fire-fighting teams went to the affected areas.

"Over 200 anti-hail rockets have been launched, over 40 litres of rain per square metre has fallen in an extremely short period of time causing the flooding. There was heavy hail in places. There were power cuts but electricity supply has been restored. Clean up of the city has begun," Nikolay Abrashev, Pleven's district governor, told BNT.

"Heavy rain started around 8:00 pm, mainly over the city of Pleven, there was no such intense rainfall in other places in the Pleven region. It was heavy rain, with heavy hail, which caused flooding of the streets in the central part of the city, because it is located lower. The downpour caused traffic disruptions. Our teams are working on getting people out of cars that are caught in flooded areas and pulling entire cars out of those areas. The teams are also working on removing fallen branches and trees. There was one more serious accident with a large fallen tree on the main road - the exit from Pleven in the direction of Sofia, which has been removed and traffic there has been restored. There was a fire in an administrative building on the territory of the former cement plant, caused by lightning. It was extinguished relatively quickly with minimal damage, limited to one room," added Commissioner Stanislav Atanasov, Director of the Regional Directorate of Fire Protection - Pleven.

The alerts were about flooded ground floors, basements and landslides. All signals are forwarded to the fire fighting department to undertake draining of the flooded areas.

There are reports of stranded vehicles in the low points of the city - in the area of the Co-operative Market, towards "Storgosia", the area of "Mizia" factory.

During the storm, trolleybus traffic was suspended for the safety of passengers and drivers. There was no damage to the overhead contact network.

The Mayor of Pleven, Dr. Valentin Hristov, issued an order to all street cleaning companies to start cleaning the city immediately in the morning, once the water has receded.

In the region of Pleven, the rainfall amounts are - 11 l/sq.m in Pordim to 31 l/sq.m in Orehovitsa, NIMH reports.

38 litres per square metre is the measured amount of rain in less than 3 hours at the NIMH station in Pleven. There was also a hailstorm, with the size of hailstones of about 10 millimetres in diametre.

An impressive amount of rain also fell in Kardzhali - 41 litres per square metre.

Code yellow weather alert for heavy precipitation accompanied by thunderstorms and hail conditions remains in effect over the next twenty-four hours for the districts of Gabrovo, Lovech, Pleven, Vratsa, Montana, Sofia, Pernik, Kyustendil and Blagoevgrad.

Image by Kalina Ivanova, Facebook