More than twenty hours. That is how long it took firefighters from Prilep to bring under control the fire reported at 16:16 on 26 July in the Zagrad-Varoš area above the town. They worked through the night until midnight, then started again at three in the morning.

Dry grass burned, one holiday cottage, and around 25 hectares of hazelnut groves. The owner of those groves will not be getting a press release about a successful intervention - he will be counting the damage. But given how fast fire moves across rocky terrain covered in low dry vegetation, and how close the Treskavec monastery sits, the bill could have been far heavier.

That is the crucial part of this story: a firebreak was built and the danger to the monastery was removed. Treskavec is not just a building with a red roof on a rock above Prilep - it is one of the oldest living sanctuaries of Macedonian cultural heritage. Eight professionals stayed on site to stop the hotspots from flaring up again.

The local authority says all activities are being coordinated with the Protection and Rescue Directorate, the Crisis Management Centre and the municipal command. They are urging residents and owners of property and holiday homes in that part of the municipality to be especially careful and to keep an eye on their land.

One line in the reports deserves more attention than everything else: fires happen at this spot every year. Every year. Which means we know where the risk is, we know when the risk is, and we know the terrain is rocky and hard to reach. The question nobody asks at the press conferences is why a location with a known annual pattern is still met with a twenty-hour intervention instead of prevention - clearing the dry vegetation, cutting firebreaks, marking access roads.

The firefighters did their part and did it well. The rest is the job of the people who plan and sign off on budgets. Next summer arrives in eleven months.