Bulgaria to take measures to reduce disaster risks: official

Bulgaria will take a series of preventive measures aimed at reducing the risks of disasters, an official said here on Monday.

Nikolay Nikolov, head of the fire safety and civil protection directorate, said that in order to improve disaster response awareness, Bulgaria would set up six regional training centers across the country where almost 700 experts would train over 90,000 people, 78,000 of them children.

With training, people would gain more knowledge about potential risks and possibilities to deal with them, Nikolov said at a roundtable dedicated to the International Day for Disaster Reduction, which was celebrated globally last Thursday.

Meanwhile, the possibilities to spread information to the public about an impending disaster would be expanded by using modern technology, Nikolov said.

"All mobile operators are obliged at our request to disseminate, free of charge, information specified by us," he said.

In addition, within three years, his directorate will establish a national center that would receive data from all disaster warning systems in the country, Nikolov said. Endit