Summer is pulling the same bill again - high temperatures, dry vegetation and a fire lurking behind every careless move. By evening, several open-air fires had been registered across Macedonia, and the most stubborn remained the one in the Gostivar region, near the village of Čegrane.

According to the Crisis Management Centre, of all the registered fires some are fully extinguished, some are under control, and the one still active is precisely the Čegrane fire, where low vegetation and shrubs are burning. Crews remain on the ground, working to fully contain it. Fires also broke out at other locations - in the Strumica and Veles regions, as well as near Pehčevo.

The numbers change from hour to hour, which is normal for a season in which a single piece of thrown rubbish or a spark can set hectares ablaze. But behind every statistic of „so many active, so many extinguished" lies the same old weakness: we react when it flares up, rarely before. How many of these fires would have happened at all with timely clearing of dry vegetation?

The relevant services appeal to citizens to be extremely careful when moving around and staying outdoors - an appeal repeated every summer as if it were new. The question isn't whether there will be fires next summer, but whether we'll be prepared even a little better than this one.