The amount of rainfall on June 19 was unprecedented and  Asparuhovo was flooded by a one-meter wave of water and mud. There was no way the 4.5 km-square ravine in Asparuhovo could take so much water. To make matters worse, over the last decades many houses, most of them owned by Roma  families, had been built on the ravine, usually without a permit, as the municipality does not consider Roma as residents of the town. The municipality of Varna kept quiet about this fact, despite knowing that the settlement was build on a place with risk of flooding  [3]. 

Following the flood, the municipality noted that 122 families were affected by the floods and evacuated their houses; 60 percent of these destroyed houses belong to Roma. No one had warned the residents of the flooding risks before[3]. 

Apart from the houses build on the ravine; the Roma were also blamed for partly being responsible for the flooding and its consequences because of timber extraction the Roma do for living, in the upper part of the neighbourhood  [2]. 

A journalist blamed “Gypsy tree felling" and “illegally built houses” for the disaster [3]. Furthermore,  a municipal council member in Varna blamed Roma for flooding using a hate speech [4] calling them "parasites", "inhuman scum" and saying that they "did not deserve to inhabit our civilization" [4].. 

Anti-Roma sentiment and discrimination shifted public attention from those who were responsible: the Bulgarian government and local authorities and politics of a longstanding social segregation in Bulgaria [3].