A grill caught fire in a restaurant at the Leptokarija shopping centre in Karpoš. The blaze was extinguished in time, with no injuries. Three firefighters with one vehicle from the Skopje fire brigade responded, the Crisis Management Centre confirmed.

The venue is "Giro House". The thick smoke was visible all the way to Partizanski Odredi boulevard.

Three firefighters and one truck. That was all it took. A short story, a happy ending - and that is exactly why it gets scrolled past.

The sentence worth reading twice

Tatjana Stojanovska, a councillor in the Karpoš municipal council from the civic initiative "Independents for Karpoš", posted footage of the burnt-out venue and wrote something more important than the fire itself.

"Why are venues with kitchens allowed in residential premises? This is not such a case, but this literally took everything in five minutes," she wrote, adding that the firefighters responded quickly.

Five minutes. That is the entire distance between one grill catching fire and an entire venue full of smoke.

She says herself that this case is not one of those - Leptokarija is a shopping centre, not a residential building. But that is exactly what makes the example useful: if in a purpose-built commercial building the fire covered that distance in five minutes, what does the same grill mean in a ground-floor kitchen under three floors of flats?

That is not a hypothetical question. It is a question for the inspectorate and for the way permits are issued to catering venues in residential buildings. Every summer brings news of fires in kitchens like that. This time it ended with three firefighters and one burnt appliance. Next time depends on who opens the question now, while nobody has been hurt.