The fire that broke out on the morning of 20 August by the last houses in the Lipkovo village of Nikustak flared up again today under strong winds and split into two arms. One is moving uphill towards the monastery of Sveta Bogorodica above Matejce. The other is heading back towards Nikustak.

The numbers describe the situation better than any statement. Air tractors of the Directorate for Protection and Rescue dropped 81 tonnes of water on the spot where the fire started. Despite that, the blaze kept spreading overnight and by morning was assessed as out of control.

An armoured carrier with six tonnes of water, a hundred metres from the first houses

Around fifty people are working on the ground - teams from the National Forests public enterprise, Directorate crews, the Kumanovo fire brigade with three vehicles, and local residents. Four Pinzgauer special vehicles are deployed wherever the terrain allows access.

The most telling detail is the armoured personnel carrier. A vehicle with a six-tonne water tank was brought in and positioned so it can be used if the fire breaks the line and the village needs defending directly. The first village houses are a hundred metres from the flames.

The Directorate's head, Stojance Angelov, said in the afternoon that Matejce should not be directly threatened, pointing out that it is an inhabited village whose residents can help the crews - as they did the previous day. That is an accurate assessment and, at the same time, an admission: defending the village partly rests on the villagers themselves.

Fifteen active fires, four serious ones

In the Crisis Management Centre's morning summary, covering 20 August to 07:30 on 21 August, 35 open fires were recorded - five active, two contained, 28 extinguished. By the afternoon new ones had broken out. Angelov reported more than 15 active fires nationwide, four of them serious: in Mariovo, Makedonski Brod, Studenicani and Nikustak.

In Mariovo, a front that was over 20 kilometres long a few days ago has been reduced to a line of one to two kilometres near the village of Krusevica. Firefighters from Prilep used a counter-fire along a previously cut firebreak and managed to stop the flames before the village of Podmolje. At Dragovdol in Makedonski Brod the fire has shrunk, but inaccessible terrain rules out air support. In Studenicani, towards Kitka, three air tractors dropped 20 tonnes of water in two runs.

Angelov also mentioned something that rarely makes it into official statements: the villages threatened near Prilep are empty, with no permanent residents. Only two people are staying in Lopatica, a village of some fifty houses.

That is the second story underneath the first one. The fire is moving through terrain overgrown with tall dry grass, shrubs and thorns - terrain that became this way because nobody lives there any more to maintain it. An emptied village is not just social statistics; it is fuel.

The Crisis Management Centre is urging citizens to immediately clear safety strips of bare earth around their houses and property. Sound advice - and advice that simultaneously shows the limit of what the state can do in their place.