At 21:54 last night, Skopje shook. Not much - magnitude 2.5 on the Richter scale, intensity between three and four on the European Macroseismic Scale. Enough to feel, not enough to damage anything.

According to the Seismological Observatory at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, the epicentre lies within the Skopje epicentral zone. The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre places it around 11 kilometres northeast of Skopje, in the border region between Kosovo, Serbia and Macedonia, at a depth of 15 kilometres.

Small differences in the data, the same message: the ground under the city is moving.

What is not news

A magnitude 2.5 earthquake will not enter any annual report as a significant event. This region generates dozens of them every year, and most go entirely unnoticed.

But Skopje is not just any city when it comes to this subject. It is a city built on a reminder from 1963, where many buildings are older than today's construction standards, and where seismic retrofitting of the existing housing stock has long since stopped appearing in any budget.

Magnitude 2.5 means everyone will sleep soundly tonight. Good. The only question is whether the sole thing that happens after every such tremor is that people talk about it for a day, and then forget until the next time.