While the state counts extinguished fire sites and measures how many hectares of forest are gone, the 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 at around noon, officers from the local police detained G.S., 45, from the village of Grešnica. He is suspected of having set fires in the open on several 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. On the same day at around 5 p.m., 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 men.

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

The phrase worth stopping on is „on several occasions”. So it was not the first time. So somebody was lighting fires, and lighting them, and lighting them, until he was caught in the act. How many fires before that were logged as an unknown perpetrator or as „human carelessness”? The blazes that burned through crisis-management crews, aircraft, volunteers and public money - how much of it had a specific name and surname?

And here is the most uncomfortable question, the one everyone skips over easily. If two men were caught in one day, in two municipalities, that does not mean there are only two. It means catching them is possible when there is somebody there to watch. The rest is known only to the forest.