An Early Warning system for Disasters and Accidents is being developed in Bulgaria

Hundreds of residents of Plovdiv and the region received messages yesterday about the earthquake, which occurred around 3:30 p.m. and had a magnitude of about 4.7 on the Richter scale. Today it became clear that the messages were not sent by the authorities in Bulgaria. Google generated them and are only for phones with the Android operating system. At the same time, the authorities in Bulgaria are preparing a system for early warning. It will be ready very soon, and the tests will begin first in the smaller towns.

Most of the earthquake messages received a day ago contained brief information about the disaster and brief advice for people to take action. Some of the residents of Plovdiv and the region received the notifications about 20 seconds before the earthquake itself.

To the Bulgarian National Radio, the Director of the Main Directorate "Fire Safety and Protection of the Population", Chief Commissioner Alexander Zhartov explained that Google sent these notifications and refer only to phones with the Android operating system. An essential condition is that devices with the location option turned on received the message.

At the same time, the Bulgarian national early warning system will be ready soon, and the tests will start first in small towns. Unlike the messages received a day ago, the one in Bulgaria will inform not only about earthquakes, Chief Commissioner Zhartov explained:

"This is a national early warning system, BG Alert, on which we have been working since the end of last year together with the contractor, the Bulgarian operators and respectively Google and Apple from the point of view that a large part of smartphones have their operating systems. In the near future, an information campaign and a website will be developed".

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/Bulgarian National Radio

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