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DEVASTATING FLOOD IN THE CITY OF VARNA, BULGARIA IN JUNE 2014 – CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE DISASTER
Abstract
The aim of the study is to analyze the natural and anthropogenic factors and long-term processes that explained the intensity and scale of the flood disaster that occurred on 19.06.2014 in Varna. For this purpose two related models of disaster – ‘Pressure and Release model’ (PAR model) and ‘Access model’ are applied. The PAR model shows how the causes of vulnerability can be traced back from unsafe conditions, through economic and social (dynamic) pressures, to underlying root causes. The idea is that a disaster is the intersection between processes generating vulnerability and the flood hazard event. In other words, increasing pressure on people arising from their vulnerability and from the impact (and severity) of the flood hazard for those people. The “release” idea is incorporated to conceptualise the reduction of disaster: to relieve the pressure, vulnerability has to be reduced. Through the second model (Access model) an expanded analysis of the principal factors in the PAR model that relate to human vulnerability and exposure to flood hazard, and focuses on the process by which the flood event impacts upon people and their responses are performed. It is a more magnified analysis of how vulnerability is initially generated by economic, social and political processes, and what then happens as a flood disaster unfolds. As a result of the study the connections that link the impact of flood event on 19th June 2014 on people, living in the city of Varna, with a series of social factors and processes that generate vulnerability have been established. The results obtained support the understanding that natural disasters are the result not only of the natural hazard, but also of the number of people characterized by varying degrees of vulnerability to the specific hazard that occupy the space and time of exposure to the hazardous event.
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