A final decision is expected within a week on the steps that will be taken to strengthen the landslide that cut off the Smolyan - Pamporovo road at the beginning of May. The road restoration is expected to begin as soon as possible, said the Minister of Regional Development and Public Works Ivan Shishkov, who arrived in Smolyan to participate in a working meeting and organize a commission to conduct an urgent engineering and geological inspection of the landslide.
The expectations from the meeting are to first understand the truth about the cause that led to the landslide of the main road, said Minister Ivan Shishkov upon entering the municipality, BNR reports.
"The cause is most likely overwetting of the terrain, since in the past years what has been undoubtedly established, at least what has been reported to me, is that there were no symptoms of this landslide. It is most likely overwetting. That is, this overwetting certainly resulted from some human intervention or inaction. "Geoprotection" is here. "Geoprotection" will establish at the moment whether the landslide is still active or not, it will help us understand the cause, we will do so in order to find the fastest technical solution. I have something in mind, but I will not tell you before I am sure that this will be the fastest solution, because the faster we restore the road, regardless of whether it will be more expensive or not, the most important thing is the speed with which it can restore the road", explained Shishkov.
A detour will be made to establish whether or not there is a possibility, at least for passenger cars, to make some kind of detour while the road compromised by the landslide is being restored. Today, an inspection of the dam and catchments will be made on site. Everything will be the subject of research, added the regional minister Ivan Shishkov.
"I want to check with my own eyes to see where the problem could possibly be. We are investigating everything, including the dam, because for the dam, at least up until now, they have helpfully given me documents from the period of 2012, but I still do not have documents from before 2012, which I am beginning to have doubts about. I hope that these doubts will not turn out to be part of the problem for this landslide," the regional minister also indicated.