At 3:20 in the morning, while Suto Orizari slept, a commercial building on Indira Gandhi Street caught fire. By daybreak there was nothing left to put out - over 20 shops reduced to ash, blackened steel frames and melted facades. All of them belonged to a single owner and were rented out to various traders who woke up with no stock and no work.

Fifteen firefighters and six vehicles from the Skopje fire brigade worked for three and a half hours - from 3:31 to 6:45. That detail comes from the Crisis Management Centre, released in response to a reporter's question. Not in a statement, not at a press conference - in response to a question. A small difference, but it says a lot about how institutions communicate at the exact moment people want answers.

The fire stopped, the questions didn't

The black smoke was visible from several parts of Skopje. The good news is that nobody was hurt and the fire did not spread to neighbouring buildings - credit goes directly to the crews who went in during the night. The bad news is that the cause is still unknown, and the inspection has yet to deliver an answer.

The Interior Ministry says measures are being taken to clear up the case. That is the standard phrasing which, in the Balkans, usually means the answer will come but nobody knows when. Meanwhile, around twenty families are counting the damage from a building where, as the footage showed, the fire spread through prefabricated structures with nothing visible to stop it.

And there sits the question nobody has officially asked: what fire protection did a shopping complex have when everything in it belonged to one person and was rented out to dozens? Who approved it, who inspected it, and how many buildings like it are trading in Skopje right now?

The calendar's irony is brutal - Suto Orizari is marking 30 years since its founding this very week. The celebration is scheduled for 11 and 12 September. Instead, the morning started with an inspection of burned-out shops.