An afternoon rain - and Bitola is underwater again. Monday afternoon's downpour turned the streets into riverbeds and disrupted the city's normal functioning: the stormwater network, as the Municipality itself admitted, couldn't take the volume of water that poured down all at once.

The list of interventions by the public utility „Niskogradnja" reads like an address book for half the city: the Streljište neighborhood by the gas station on „8 September" street, Karpoš-Klanica toward „Železnička," „Železnička" itself by „Imperator," „Partizanska" in front of Occupational Medicine, „Bursa" and „Car Samoil" streets, Gorno Orizari with its drainage canal and the Raštani stream, Kurdeles in „Strčin," the old Kurdeles by „Vasko Karangelevski," then „Badembalari," „Bair" and „Široka," where the grates failed to collect the water coming off the hill. The machines stay on the ground, and crews are also intervening on the roads toward the villages of Raštani, Brusnik and Lavci.

The Municipality says all available crews went out immediately and are working until things normalize, with an appeal to drivers to be cautious. That's fine - people on the ground are doing their job, and in the rain. But the question that imposes itself is a different one: how many times do the same addresses have to appear on a list like this before the flooding stops being a „surprise" and becomes a project? Grates that don't collect the water coming off the hill aren't a weather event - they're an infrastructure verdict. How much do the interventions after every rain cost, and how much would it cost to fix the drainage once and for all?

Short, intense downpours are becoming an ever more common picture of summer - the lived experience of every Bitola resident says so. The city's infrastructure will either adapt, or the „surprise" will repeat with every summer storm. Until then: boots, patience and the „Niskogradnja" crews on the ground.