Nobody can say exactly how many trees came down across Skopje in the storm with winds over 130 kilometres an hour. The initial Interior Ministry figure was 189 fallen trees. Based on assessments on the ground, the real number is considerably higher - around 80 fell at the Butel cemetery alone, hundreds across Karposh and Aerodrom, a large number in the City Park. Now that the saws have finished, the question is where all that timber goes.

The City of Skopje gave a concrete answer, which is news in itself. Fallen leaves, small branches and plant waste are being taken to the Drisla landfill. The larger trunks and timber mass are being moved to the public parks and greenery enterprise, where they are stored and prepared for further use - the plan is to turn them into summer pavilions for Vodno, street furniture, benches and fencing.

The remaining timber, following established practice, will be given to socially vulnerable families as firewood, in cooperation with the Red Cross and the humanitarian organisation Sv. Spas. So the trees that crushed cars in July will heat someone's home in January.

This is a rare case of the administration doing the job sensibly: instead of tonnes of timber ending up as waste, some becomes a park bench and some becomes firewood for a family that will not have to buy it. The logic is so simple that it is worth asking why it needed explaining at all - and why the public had to put a question to the City to find out where the trucks were going.

The clean-up is not finished. Four days after the storm, trees are still lying at several locations, because the work is being done by priority - the ones blocking streets and posing a danger were removed first. With the machinery and staff they have, the public utilities simply cannot go any faster.

The storm, fortunately, passed without loss of life. What remains is material damage, crushed cars and destroyed graves, and it is still not known how compensation for those will be paid. That is the next question, and no saw is going to answer it.