VIDEO REPORT: How a community recovers after a disaster. In Pechea, six months after the floods, "we are the only ones left on the streets and alleys of the village." / In Bulgaria, an entire neighborhood has been rebuilt

Friday, Mar 28, 2025

European projects examine community recovery after natural disasters like floods and earthquakes across various nations.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

The article explores the long-term recovery from natural disasters across Europe, featuring case studies from GalaÈ›i, Romania; Varna, Bulgaria; Cork, Ireland; and Murcia/Lorca, Spain. Following devastating floods in Pechea, GalaÈ›i, where 1,200 households were affected by Cyclone Boris, residents continue to struggle with rebuilding their lives despite initial aid. The local administration is managing ongoing needs for construction materials and support, while also addressing the emotional impact on survivors. Prevention efforts are discussed, noting that the region is prone to flooding and requires significant infrastructure improvements. Similarly, a decade after floods in Varna’s Asparuhovo district, reconstruction was completed with a memorial. In Cork, Ireland, flood defense projects face bureaucratic delays. Furthermore, Lorca, Spain, faced massive economic losses from an earthquake, leading to a multi-billion euro recovery effort, though bureaucratic issues persisted. The piece is part of the PULSE initiative, a European journalistic collaboration examining post-disaster recovery.


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PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.