Siviri on Halkidiki is a name half of Macedonia knows by heart. A holiday spot, a regular destination, a place where every other person knows somebody who has been there. This week a family there lost its home completely, and in front of the cameras of Greek state television they managed to say only one thing: „We lost everything.”

Of everything they had built over the years, they managed to save one dog. The house, their belongings, everything else stayed inside. That is the whole story, and not a single word more is needed to understand what it means.

The Siviri fire is part of a much bigger picture. Greece is burning on several fronts again this season, and Halkidiki - a peninsula whose August traffic is counted in hundreds of thousands of visitors - is exactly the place where the density of people and dry pine forest make the most dangerous combination possible.

The question we ask every year later than we should

After every fire like this comes the same cycle: extinguishing, statements, promises of new equipment and new aircraft. Then October comes and the topic closes until the following June. How many times does the same season have to repeat before fire preparedness stops being a summer improvisation and becomes something that works all year round?

For a reader in Macedonia this is not distant news. Halkidiki is four or five hours by car, and in August there are Macedonian plates in every car park. When Siviri burns, the place burning is one where a great many of our people spent a summer.

Two people are left without a roof over their heads, and the Greek services are still fighting the fire. Everything else - the analyses, the statistics, the comparisons with previous years - can wait. Somebody right now has nowhere to go back to.