A fire broke out in a building of the Istra factory in Kočani, a plant producing wooden tables and chairs. Part of the interior burned. Three fire trucks and five firefighters were deployed, confirmed the commander of the Kočani fire brigade, Dragan Apostolov.

The flames were stopped before they reached the warehouse housing the Kam supermarket. That is a sentence worth reading twice: a single fire brigade with three trucks managed to hold the fire a few metres from a supermarket full of stock and, during working hours, full of people.

One person sought medical attention for smoke inhalation. There were no other injuries. The material damage is yet to be assessed, and the cause of the fire is so far unknown. The Kočani police station has been notified.

Istra is a furniture factory - wood, lacquers, glues, fabrics. A plant where the raw material is itself fuel. Buildings like this fall by definition into the highest category of fire risk, which means they also carry the strictest obligations for detection and suppression systems.

Did those systems work? That is the question the inspection will answer. And it is the question that usually never gets a public answer, because when nobody dies, the interest burns out faster than the fire. Kočani deserves that answer.