While the state counts extinguished burn sites and measures how many hectares of forest are gone, police caught two men with matches in hand. Not metaphorically - literally in the act, out in the open, in the hottest days of the summer.

The first case is in Makedonski Brod. On 7 August around noon, officers from the Makedonski Brod police station detained G.S., 45, from the village of Grešnica. He is suspected of having set outdoor fires on multiple previous occasions, and on the same day at around 11:30 he was caught setting another one - in the area between Grešnica and the village of Slatina.

The second is in Dolneni. The same day at around 5pm, police from Prilep detained G.A., 76, from Skopje, in the village of Sarandinovo, suspected of starting fires in open areas. Charges will be filed against both.

Forty-five and seventy-six. Two men at opposite ends of a life, in two different municipalities, with the same description of method. That is not a coincidence that repeated itself - it is a pattern police logged twice in a single day.

The phrase worth stopping on is „on multiple occasions”. So it wasn't the first time. So somebody was lighting fires, and lighting them, and lighting them, until he was caught in the act. How many of those fires were filed under unknown perpetrator, or under „human carelessness”? All that fire burned through crisis-management crews, aircraft, volunteers and public money - how much of it had an actual name attached?

And then the most uncomfortable question, the one everybody skips over. If two were caught in one day, in two municipalities, that does not mean there are only two. It means catching them is possible when someone is there to watch. The rest, only the forest knows.