The firefighting crews were coming back from Kitka when they spotted something that changes the whole story of this fire. A new fire line, almost a kilometre long, created by simultaneous ignition at several positions below the asphalt road. Not one spark that spread. Several points, at the same time, beside a road.

Stojanče Angelov, director of the Protection and Rescue Directorate, made a direct appeal to the residents of Studeničani to help locate whoever is doing this, noting that the fire had already been fully extinguished several times before being set again. For now that is a suspicion voiced by an official - nobody has been identified, nobody detained.

Near Gradsko, control has been lost

The second front is at Gradsko. The fire broke out around 11am in the fields between Dolno and Gorno Čičevo, most likely from stubble burning, and with tall dry grass and wind it spread at a speed the crews could not match. Angelov said it without softening: "Unfortunately, we have now lost control of it."

The fire line stretches more than ten kilometres and is moving toward the village of Podles. Fire units from Kavadarci, Negotino and Veles are on the ground, along with four Pinzgauer off-road vehicles from the Directorate, air tractors redirected from Kitka itself, and an interior ministry helicopter. The terrain is rocky and impassable on foot. The main priority is keeping the flames out of the nearby pine forest.

"There will be a long, hard battle here, possibly several days," Angelov assessed. Locals have joined in with tractors, cutting firebreaks.

Paligrad held, Kitka still burning

The Skopje village of Paligrad on Kitka was defended overnight after an all-evening intervention and is out of immediate danger. That is a success, but not an ending - the fire on the mountain belt between Studeničani and Zelenikovo remains an active front, hard to control because of the steep, densely wooded terrain.

With the multi-day fight on Kitka and the new front at Gradsko, the air fleet is being split between two fires. The air tractors working Kitka in the morning were sent to Čičevo in the afternoon, and the fire on Kitka then flared up again.

Twenty-three fires in one day

According to the Crisis Management Centre's tally up to 6pm, 23 open-air fires were registered across Macedonia - eight active, one under control and 14 extinguished. Besides Gradsko and Studeničani-Zelenikovo, there were active fronts in Gostivar, Čaška, Prilep, Makedonski Brod, Kavadarci and Vinica.

This is the resource arithmetic anyone who follows the summer season knows by heart. Eight active fires, a limited number of planes and helicopters, and constant redirection from one front to another. Every redirection means that somewhere, the fire is being handed time.

And if the suspicion about Kitka is confirmed, part of those resources is not being spent on a natural disaster. It is being spent on someone who, every time the crews put the fire out, comes back and lights it again.